The last birthday of the season

The first 5 months of the year are "birthday season" at our house.
We celebrate at least one birthday every month in those 5 months, except for April in which we celebrate 3 birthdays within 10 days of each other.

Ever since we turned the calendar to begin 2013, our youngest son has been counting down the days until HIS birthday.
His is the very last birthday of "the season," and he counted it down by how many more birthdays were in front of his.
His turn finally came around this last week!!

Taco Bell and presents for lunch!!

Special dinner with Dad...by himself!!

Happy 7th Birthday, Garrett!!

Happy 11th Birthday, Grant

Our oldest son turned 11 this month!

Just a few snapshots of his special day.

We let him take the day off of school 

(one of the perks of homeschooling!)

and he had several friends over playing with him later in the afternoon!

Nothing makes this child happier than sharing cupcakes, Minecraft, Legos, and a game of hide-n-seek

with all his buddies!

We love you, Grant, and are praying for God to work in a mighty way in your life!!

A girl's 13th birthday party idea

It's birthday season at our house!!
We start celebrating birthdays in January with our youngest, and have one birthday every month through May.
During April though, we have 3 birthdays in a span of 10 days in addition to our wedding anniversary and extended family members birthdays!!

This year our second born turned 13!!
Yikes!
We now have two teenagers in the house.
(And actually, I reeeeeally like having older children in my house!!  Lots of perks and fun!!)

So when she told me awhile back that she wanted a sleepover this year, I knew I would have to have a theme!!
Birthday party ideas for 13-year old girls can be tricky.
They are too old for a lot of the typical girl stuff, but yet fun enough to still be willing to do something out-of-the-ordinary.
So I got onto Pinterest right away.
When I saw this idea, I knew we probably had a winner!!
Ashlyn was all for it......so a "Camping Party" it was!!

***WARNING:  Lots of pictures ahead!**

 When the girls arrived, this little table was set up with some snacks for them before we left on our scavenger hunt.  These cute little favor boxes contained trail mix for the each girl.

 I thought for sure I took pictures of the entire table and the cute picnic basket set up to hold water bottles.......

I was totally inspired by the idea I saw on pinterest to come up with cupcake display.

Can you tell what it's supposed to look like?

We just made the cupcakes ourselves and spray painted them (with Wilton's edible frosting coloring spray)

to make them look like fire!!

The first activity we did was a scavenger hunt at our local shopping mall.

Ours is all outdoors, so I let the girls go in teams with 5 things written on index cards they had to find.

Here the girls have found a sample of s'more flavored popcorn.

They also had to do things like try on a pair of hiking boots and take a picture to prove it.

When we got home, we were all starving and I made pigs-in-a-blanket, baked beans,

and tator tots.  I served them in recycled tin cans wrapped in a strip of pretty paper and tied with twine.

I'm kickin' myself for not getting a picture of that either!!

Movies came next, followed by making real s'mores in our fireplace!!

The girls did actually start out in the tent in the backyard, but I woke in the morning to find this:

Happy 13th Birthday, Ashlyn!!!

We love you!!

Abby's birthday celebration

Hoo boy!!
What craziness has been these last 7 days!!
Last week was spring break for all the schools in our area,
and our two oldest girls had been invited to go on vacation with friends to Hot Springs, AR.
Right smack in the middle of that week, our house got hit with a swift moving stomach virus.
It started Wednesday with our youngest son.
On Thursday evening, I got a call from my friend in Arkansas who had my two girls to let me know that Ashlyn, my Type 1 Diabetic, was throwing up.  She eventually ended up in the ER before it was all over, but that is another story to come.
I ended up staying up till 2 in the morning that Thursday evening to make sure Ashlyn was fine and my friend had all the information she needed to get her discharged.
By the time Friday evening rolled around, I was exhausted because that had been my grocery shopping day, I was planning for Abby's birthday the next day, my two oldest got home that afternoon and I was pretty emotional, and I was already running on limited sleep.
I was so looking forward to a full night's sleep when our oldest son woke me up at 3 am to tell me he was going to throw up.
Which he did.
Twice an hour for the next four hours.
I never was able to go back to sleep, so I just started my day at about 6 am.
Saturday, the 16th, was our 3rd daughter's birthday, and several times she had reminded me that she wanted "donut store donuts" for her breakfast.
So I just made an early run for donuts.
I had so wanted to do some fun things for her on that day, but with a sick child needing my comfort, two exhausted ones recovering from a long trip, and other pre-scheduled activities that day, we just hung around the house.
I wish it could've been a little different day for her, but it was what it was.

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Celebrating our first birthday of the year!

Someone is turning 5 years old today.....

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