Theme Weeks: For the Bears!

If you haven't noticed, the bears around our house are pretty much a part of our family.  Last week was our week to celebrate them. ;)

We started the week by making invitations for each one.  M found all of her bears in the hallway holding their invites when she woke up.  (My plan had been to get that one all set up right before I went to bed.  I woke up at 4:45a--plow truck--and realized that I had forgotten to do it.  It required some major sneaking to avoid floor creaks!)  T found his bears' invitations in a pile with "Horse" (because, of course, Horse was supposed to deliver the notes but he can't read yet. ;)

We decorated for the party and then T chose to make "panilla" cupcakes.

M made a chocolate cake (and cupcakes with the left-over batter).  (Okay, here's a real-life mommy moment.  I am a bit of a germ-fanatic in the kitchen.  I wash my hands constantly when I cook.  My biggest fear is spreading my own germs to someone else.  Needless to say I'm trying to teach M and T good kitchen hygiene--you know, if you lick your fingers, no big deal, but, please, go wash your hands.  And they're really good about this!  So we're all happily stirring cake batters and we're just about ready to pour M's cake into the pan when it happens.  She sneezes right in it!  Ahh!  What to do?  I took stock of the situation and realized that this cake was only for us and that I'm sure the heat would take care of any sneeze heebie-geebies, right?  Against all that I believe in, we just went with it and even ate it! :)

The Bear party.  Beary turned 3 and Ben turned 5.  Happy Birthday, guys!

Spy cam caught this scene.  T sitting on M's lap while reading our stack of bear books.  Too cute even though M was having a really hard time seeing the pictures (they're really almost the same size).

During the week they also turned their closets into "dens."

And in a little blog/journal housekeeping, the previous week was Space Week.  All because early in the week we got a cool glimpse of Jupiter and her moons through the telescope.  During that week we also read a lot about the planets and made a Solar System out of playdough.

( Quite blurry, but a shot of the moon through the telescope.)