Matt and Tebow/Erin & Selanne

I know with a title like that you're thinking "Wow, that's awesome if they got to see/meet/talk to their favorite players!" And that would be totally awesome but that's not what happened. But in order for you to get the full effect of this post I need to go all Heinz Doofenshmirtz and start with a few back stories.

Back story #1: Early in our marriage, Matt talked about not liking animals and that we would never have a pet. Now, I've had a few pets and loved them but I'm not one of those people who HAVE to have a pet. But Matt was so anti it was a little freaky. Seriously, the only reason we have a turtle was because she was around before Matt was so he didn't have a choice. There however arose the argument about what to do if we had kittens abandoned on our lawn or something similar to that. He said he didn't care and he'd call animal control to come get them. I said I wouldn't be able to do that because if they don't get placed quickly, they just destroy them. I said that I would have to take care of them for a couple days until I found homes for them but we wouldn't have to keep them. He said absolutely not. I said he didn't have a choice in that matter because I couldn't condem poor little baby animals to die. Anyways, the conversation ended and we never landed anywhere on the topic. I mean the odds of that happening anyways were slim and none.

Back Story #2: A couple of months ago we noticed that these 2 cats would just hang out in our backyard. We'd shoo them away just about every day. Matt got pissed saying "you watch, one of them will have kittens in our backyard." Then the cats were no where to be seen for a little while.

Now to 2 weeks ago. My mom sent me a text message at school on Tuesday morning and told me that she and Daniel had found 3 kittens in our backyard: 2 calicos and one white and orange. One calico was super fluffy and a little chubby, the other calico had shorted hair and seemed to be the runt, and the white one was somewhere in between. She looked for a mommy cat (and continued to do so throughout the day) and one was not found. My mom's theory is that mom left them because they were about 6 weeks old and had been fed so she thinks that mom abandoned them and they started meowing because they were hungry. So my mom got a rag towel and a box and brought them inside to feed them. I told Matt the situation at lunch and his first sentence was "It's not my problem. I'm not taking care of them. We'll take them to the pound." A few minutes later he asked "What do they look like?" My mom sent me a picture and he got all butt hurt that she didn't send one to him. Anyways, between my mom and me, we took them to the vet and took care of them for a few days. It didn't take longer than that for the kittens to grow on Matt. Before long, he was playing with them and taking an interest in what happened with them. My mom decided that she wanted to keep the fluffy one and then Matt started taking a liking to the white one. I mean it was white and orange with blue eyes. Matt was hooked. He said we could keep that one. I had a couple of leads on a home for the last one but they didn't pan out and Matt said he didn't want just anyone having her. He then decided that since he got his boy kitten, I could have the girl kitten. There you have it. My mom has one kitten and we kept the other 2. We went and got tags for them and Matt named his kitten Tebow and since my kitten was black, orange, and white I named her Selanne. Not any female Ducks that I know so I just went with my favorite. So now here we are, the owners of not one but 2 kittens. And yes, we know they turn into cats. And yes I know that many of you (brinkerhoffs) are thinking eeewww gross but you can't judge because if Matt can go from "I don't care if they die" to letting kittens fall asleep on his chest within the span of 48 hours, I'm sure he wouldn't have been the only one had all you been around! They are just too frickin cute!

Matt with Tebow

Their first ever picture (Selanne aka Runt is on the left, Tebow, then Fluffy McChubsters on the right)

He's 3!

Considering that some people have thought that Daniel was 4, I guess it's a good thing that he's actually 3 now. I mean when you can get into Disneyland for free because you are under 3 but are tall enough to go on Matterhorn and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, it means you're big! Daniel is a boy now! It's crazy to think about that. I don't have a baby anymore! I mean he goes to preschool next year for crying out loud! His birthday this year landed on Mother's Day and I didn't want to have his party that day because I wanted it to be all about him and not have to share it with all us moms. Plus, I wouldn't want to invite friends on a Sunday. So we had his birthday party on Saturday the 7th. I was trying to get him to have a Jake and the Neverland Pirates party and he was ok with it but the Tuesday before his party, he decided he wanted a Woody party. It was fine because I hadn't bought anything yet! I went out and got all the party supplies on Wednesday and then we got an invite in the mail the next day for one of his friends who's also having a Toy Story party. I felt bad like I was stealing some thunder from his friend but Daniel's old enough now that he'd throw a fit that I didn't give him the right party. Unfortunately, Clayton was super sick so Jeff & his family weren't able to come and one of Daniel's friends couldn't come because his mom is about ready to pop out another baby so she was exhausted after having her shower the same day. We grilled (of course) and then we had stick the badge on Woody & Buzz and Daniel was the only one who wanted to play. Then we had a Woody pinata and it was hard to break. Even the dads were having a hard time. It was like that VW pinata commercial. But Parker and Daniel had a blast swinging away at it. Plus there were fruit snacks and suckers inside! Daniel got a lot of summer toys (bubbles, sprinker worm, bubble & water guns, etc.), some cute clothes, a baseball tee with a wiffleball and bat, a cars 3 wheel scooter, and from mom & dad a real golf club and golf bag. Like full on iron. And grammy gave him another club too so now he has a golf bag with 2 real golf clubs when he goes to the range with daddy. The same day he managed to break his baseball tee and grandpa had to come to the rescue and fix the situation. He was hitting it awesome though!
The Pinata before.....

And the pinata after... Poor decapitated Woody.

I decided that after how long it took me to do that Lightning McQueen cake last year, I'd just do cupcakes this year. So he had "Ooooooo" cupcakes (Daniel calls them oooos because he has no concept of aliens and they say ooohhh).

Getting ready to go outside with Daddy and "swing golf balls."
The next day on his actual birthday, I made him waffles and Matt & I sang him Happy Birthday in the morning. He seemed very confused like "ummm, didn't we do this yesterday?" so I'm not sure he grasped what all the fuss was about but he does know that he is 3. I still can't believe that Daniel is 3 and he is definitely such a smart and handsome kid! We love him to pieces! Happy Birthday Daniel!

Easters

We finally had an excuse to dye eggs this year since Daniel was old enough to "help" and know what was going on. We got the Toy Story package...wasn't as cool at we thought it would be. But Daniel loved it. Here are some fun pics from that afternoon.

Very proud of his green dinosaur egg!

Easter was really weird this week because it was so late in the month. Our school decided to do our spring break the first week in April so it didn't back up to Easter like it normally does. We had a plan though. My siblings, mom, Rick, and the grandkiddos were going to go to my mom's house for a nice ham dinner and then Shannon & I were going to go back to my house for "something I forgot" and the Easter Bunny was going to have hidden eggs at my house and we were going to call everyone over to hunt for the eggs. Except when we woke up, it was raining. So we called the Easter Bunny and called the plan off. However, in the morning though, there were eggs hidden along with Daniel's basket for him to find when he woke up. He wanted to open each egg before finding the next one. Daniel decided that he wanted chocolate for breakfast. So we let him. =)

Finding his first egg... and opening it before looking for any others.

Ummm, OCD much? Stacking his eggs nice and neat. And color coordinated.

After church we went to my mom's for dinner and then eggs were hidden for Daniel, Maddie, and Clayton inside the house while they were watching a movie upstairs. The boys were so funny. Daniel wanted to find them all while Clayton wanted to open them which slowed him down significantly. When we were trying to encourage Clayton to find more eggs, he went over to Daniel's basket that was on the floor and tried to dump Daniel's basket into his own! Smart kid. It was a fun day but I really wanted a day to relax afterwards (dumb school).

Coming down the stairs to get the eggs...

On the hunt. Holy hair right? Outta control. He got a haircut the next day!

Looking through his loot...

Everybody say cheese! (very awkwardly...)