Black Eyes, Birthdays and Muddy Underwear?

So, where do I start! It's been a little crazy around here (but what's new). I think I've mentioned that we joined a playgroup with three other moms who all have kids around Elia's age. It has worked out so well. Now there are two boys and two girls in the group. A week and a half ago we took the kids to the Children's Museum in downtown Houston. The kids loved dressing up (a precursory experience to Halloween) and pretending they were "newscasters": Our little "students" (l to r) Elia, Mark, Robby and Lauren
Captain Ethan at the periscope:
I thought it was so appropriate that Ethan was holding a fake corn on the cob from the museum's "market" while looking at this baby chick. I think the baby chick thinks it's real!
I went to a house to look at buying some things. The lady thought the kids were so cute she gave them a balloon animal kit. We've been making balloon animals all week! We've gotten pretty good... well, Eric has gotten better than I have, but alas, all the balloons are gone and there will be no more balloon animals. Ethan loved putting this monkey over his head.
I let the kids play outside while I was making dinner one night... it's one reason why I love having a backyard, but the underwear Elia had taken off so she could get in the paddling pool earlier in the afternoon, soon became her buried treasure!
OK, so this is kind of a random picture, but people have asked about Ethan's hair length and knowing I would want a picture when I eventually cut it, I've decided to share it with you:
Happy Birthday Papa! It was Eric's... 29th birthday yesterday. I put 3 candles on his cake telling him that he was close to 30 and 29 candles were too many! He's not sensitive about it, so I knew I could get away with the joke. We had Mexican corn which is cooked corn on the cob slathered with mayonnaise, queso seco (a dry crumbly cheese) and chili powder. Even Elia loved it! It is tradition to push the birthday boy's face in the cake (we had deliciously moist tres leches cake) and since I was taking pictures Elia kindly obliged:

After... what a good sport:Eric's work held a party for all of the kids. Elia, who I thought was going to go as Ariel since she's been talking about it since her birthday, chose instead to go as Tinkerbell... thanks in large part to the huge billboards with Tinkerbell all over the sides of the freeway. So... we brought out the wings I bought for her second Halloween when she was a little over 1 and the tutu I made largely for a photography prop last year.

Ethan dressed as a chicken... and I know we're biased, but boy was he cute!

Last but not least, you may have noticed the black eye in some of Ethan's pictures. He face planted into our tile step and what started out as a small cut developed into a black eye a couple days later...

... and because I have fun with this sort of stuff, I thought I would reveal the power of Photoshop. I loved the picture so much, but didn't want the black eye, so I took it out! You know all those perfect looking models in magazines? I'll leave it to you to deduce how they got that way!