And A Legend Was Born - Luke the Dragon Rider!

Hello Fans!

It is that time of year again - the anniversary of the blog post that changed The Heb forever.  When it went from "the random stuff of two ordinary people trying to push themselves as the most interesting people on the planet" to a blog you actually wanted to read!  Or at least look at.

You see, three years ago  LUKE WAS BORN!!!!  And this blog started posting a whole lot more pictures.

Yes sir-ee, our little boy is THREE YEARS OLD!  And he can do so much now.  He is practically potty trained with an accident in his pull-up every now and then, he can button up his own shirt, he carried groceries in from the car, he can get out starwberries and wash them in the sink, he has firm and fast opinions, he knows the alphabet, can recite from memory a zillon books, can swiffer the kitchen like nobody's business, and cover himself in a nice, healthy layer of dirt in under three minutes.

His birthday was on Tuesday, and after a hearty breakfast of yogurt parfet and hot chocolate (because it's his birthday) the entire family headed out to the zoo!  They told the people at the front office that it was Luke's birthday, so he got to wear a special pin all day that got him a free ride on the carousel.

So excited that it"s his birthday!

Oh yeah, Jacy loved the zoo!  Those trees were awesome sauce!

We saw all sorts of animals, like the hippos and zeebras and giraffes, but Luke definately had an agenda.  He wanted to see the Komodo Dragon, and nothing was going to distract him from that goal.  Even the cute lion cubs playing right in front of the glass only got a passing glance on the way to the dragon.  And when we got there, what was the dragon doing?  He was sleeping behind a rock!  All we could see was his tail, but Luke loved it!  That boy faithfully sat there for fifteen minutes going on about how exciting it was to see the tail.  At one point the dragon actually turned around so they could see his face (and then went back to sleep) and you would have thought Luke was at the circus or something.  Luke's second favorite animals were the otters, which also got a good fifteen minutes of Luke's attention. They were having tons of fun swimming and running around with each otter, and Luke loved it!

Step aside Hiccup!  Luke the Dragon Rider is in town!

"It's not a dragon!  It's a Komodo Dragon!"

Look at those otters!

The best part of this zoo trip had to be the carousel.  We had never ridden it before, so it was Luke's first time!  He loved it and had fun telling his horse to "giddy-up!"  But then he saw one of the "cars" and really wanted to ride in one of them, so we paid for him to have an extra ride and he sat in one all by himself!  We ended our exciting birthday adventure with a treat of cotton candy - what a fun birthday!

"Giddy-Up!"

Happy Birthday Cute Boy!

Later that night Marinda made Mutter Paneer (Luke's favoriet) for dinner, then we had presents where he got some more train tracks (these had a cool raised up blocks and a tunnel) from Grandma and Grandpa and a fancy art easel from Jejema and Jejebapa.  Then some ice cream cake and candles with Grandpa and Jejema watching on video chat to top off his day!

Guess who's excited to eat his cake?!?

Luke feeding some cake to Jejema!

Since we're on the birthday kick, we'll just sick ahead to Saturday and his party!  For the past couple of months (we're not joking) Luke has been saying that he wanted a police car birthday party - and try as Marinda might she just could NOT find police car anything!  But that didn't stop her!  She got some poster paper and made a police car decoration, and then she and Amit made some police car cupcake toppers!  Luke was so excited - it is so nice that three year olds are easy to please sometimes.

The police car says "Woop Woop!

Marinda temporarily lost control of having reasonable thoughts
and for some reason made the topper in the shape of stars -
which then Amit spent an hour and a half cutting out!
 He's a good husband - but he did bring up the fateful "ghosts" incident of 2010.

The party itself was what we at The Heb are calling a "low-key Lu-ki party" - where we had it at a park, brought some fruit and dominos pizza and had someone else make the cupcakes, had Luke blow out his candles and then just let the kids play.  It was perfect!  Even the rediculous heat didn't kill anyone off because Amit had grabbed the card table set up the food in the shade, instead of at the sun bleached picnic tables.  Everyone, kids and adults, had a good time and Luke was just glowing with how happy he was that we had a party just for him!

The little man of the hour!  And picture of the year!
Happy Birthday Luku!

Jacy getting into the spirit!

Our awesome UW friends who drove over for our party!
Including Jen who had just had her baby 10 days ago!

And our awesome new Lake Hills friends!

There was an awesome playground at Ardmore Park where we had the party,
but by the end the wild children had all retreated to the trees!

For other fun Luke Birthday activities this week, Luke had his three year check up!  Our wonderful doctor declared him perfect and Luke was such a good pasient.  When he climbed up on the table and laid down all by himself, Dr. Kertesz just turned to Marinda and said "It's not just the looks, he's smart too!"  For stats he is 38.7 inches tall and 35.5 pounds - great job growing Luke!

This week was also Luke's first read dentist appointment.  Marinda had found a cute pediatric dentists office near by, and Luke had fun watching Cars 2 while they cleaned his teeth.  Then the dentist came over with a big stuffed dog that had a full set up teeth and taught Luke how to brush the dogs teeth with a oversized toothbrush - it was pretty fun to watch!  Luke's teeth are all perfect and now he gets to get his teeth brushed after breakfast as well as before bed now.  He just keeps growing!

Marinda and Amit got some fun in too this week.  On Friday we went to a murder mystery party. One of our friends wanted do something special for his wife on her birthday so he threw her a surprise murder mystery party. Marinda's character was the wealthy, snobby, widow of the person who was murdered and Amit was a washed-up rocker from the 70's. Everyone there were completely committed to their characters so we ended up having a blast.  Marinda had a little bit of a hard time being a jerk - because she is just soo nice - but Amit had no trouble at all being a hillarious 60 something, senial rock legand!

Funny Luke Stories:
- Marinda was giving Luke a bath when a giant spider of doom appeared.  Marinda didn't handle it very well, and yelled for Amit (who didn't hear her) and yanked Luke out of the tub and threw him into the hallway.  Afterwards, while Marinda was telling Amit all about their near death experiance, she moved her pointer fingers around to demonstrate that you could see the fang thingys on it.  So now Luke has started telling the story too, complete with finger wiggling.  Be careful what you do, BECAUSE THEY'RE WATCHING YOU!
- Luke loved his birthday party so much that he kept saying that he wanted another birthday and that he wanted to be four.  Amit and Marinda keep telling him that he has to stay three for at least a year first though.
- Marinda was running around getting stuff ready for the party on Saturday, when she stopped to watch Luke standing in front of the mirror in the hallway buttoning up all the buttons on his shirt.  It was a precious moment when Marinda could really see how grown up and independent her little boy is really becoming.

Funny Jacy Stories:
- SHE IS MOBILE!  We haven't actually seen her move, but Marinda had set her down on her play mat to go take care of Luke, and when she came back Jacy was crying and banging her head into the green play table THREE FEET away from where Marinda had set her down!
- She has also discovered her thumb.  She's not hard core sucking in it yet, but Marinda has found her with that little digit in her mouth on more than one occasion.