Last Year of Thirties

Happy 39th birthday, Bobby! A little lunch at Acapulco and a family dinner at home:)

Twelve Have Passed

My last year with pre-teen Cade arrived today. Twelve years have passed and today we celebrate it! He woke to some Sister Schubert's cinnamon rolls and we sang a little morning Happy Birthday song. 

He chose his annual all day Partypalooza ( I mean, why would you NOT?) and we invited pretty much the same crew that's been coming for years. We had a couple absentees this year....one that has been at his birthday parties every single year of his life. That was a bummer:( His friends were primed and ready for an all day swimathon and I was prepared with sunscreen since I sent home a bunch of lobsters last year. 

 Cade requested Grandma's chocolate cake and as usual it was divine!

Happy birthdaaaay dear Caaaadee....Happy birthday to you!

The gang.

Swimming, swimming and more swimming....

And the annual birthday jump. I always love this photo:)

We ended the night with some dinner at Drake's where there was a trivia contest going on. The boys participated but didn't win (although they thought they had it in the bag!). The biggest spurt of laughter came when someone else in the restaurant named their trivia team "Saving Ryan's Privates" instead of the popular movie "Saving Private Ryan". Oh boys. If it has to do with anatomy or bodily sounds there is always laughter. 

I'm so thankful to have had the privilege of watching Cade grow over these twelve years. I pray for many, many more partypaloozas to come!~

FOUR!

Elaina's fourth birthday day was full of things she loves. The first: Doughnuts! 

And second, baseball! We spent her actual birthday day watching brothers play and honestly, she couldn't have been happier to do so:) 

Sugar and spice (more spice than sugar:) ) and everything nice (unless you make her mad), that's what this little girl is made of! 

TEN!

Today my little winter baby turns TEN! Double digits for another kiddo in the Morgan Casa. It's unreal to me! I thought at 10 he'd forget about the birthday crown but the night before (thankfully so I didn't have to get up at the crack of dawn to do crafting) he asked if I had made it yet. I love that he asked me that:)

Cade was already gone for the morning to school so he missed out on the birthday boy donut request. Rhett knows better than to miss a donut opportunity so he was in on the action. Lanie? Sleeping. 

His birthday dinner request was J. Alexander's so we headed up for a great meal that evening. We followed it up with Nothing "Bundt" Cakes and some present opening. 

He got the Beats he'd been asking for:) 

I love celebrating birthdays. I'm so thankful that God blessed us with another year of Grant. I pray that it's followed by 100 more! 

Eight Years on Halloween!!

This year a round of bad, stormy, tornadoish weather caused trick-or-treating to be postponed a day, which in turn meant that running through the neighborhood collecting candy was the main event at Rhett's sleepover birthday party! Everyone actually thought it was pretty awesome!

Elaina, after an entire year of saying she was going to be a skeleton, pulled a switch on me and about two weeks before Halloween insisted that she was going to be Sophia the First. So, Sophia it was!

Rhett was a boxer.....

along with his bud Silas. 

Sophia was so cute that I had to put another picture of her here:)

And, even though this picture doesn't do it justice (it just looks like a bunch of dandruff) her bun was drenched in sparkle spray. She LOVED it (and has asked to have sparkle hair at least 10 times since then!)

Cade and his friends decided to be Presidents. Cade chose Ronald Reagan. 

He had one line, "Mr. Gorbechev, Mr. Gorbechev, TEAR DOWN THAT WALL!". He spoke it well. And his mask creeped me out...big time. In fact, Bobby stood on the stairs in the house with the dumb thing on and waited for me in the dark. I collapsed into a heap a few stairs down and nearly wet myself. Ronald Reagan face in the dark when you're not expecting it is no bueno. 

Here's the rest of his crew: Abe Lincoln and Richard "I'm not a crook" Nixon. 

Grant went as this blue man. What is this costume you say? To which I'd answer two things: Strange and I don't know. 

Callan was his purple cohort and the colors complimented our neighborhood friend quite well! 

 This is where Halloween gets all precious. I love cute little costumes on cute little kids. These three fit the bill. 

 Elaina turned in earlier than everyone else. Her little princess feet just couldn't take running to another house. And they were probably like little ice cubes since she insisted wearing sandals even though it was quite chilly. She got a huge (to her) bag of loot! 

Once the treating was over it was time to head in for Rhett's birthday fun. I put a "no candy tonight" rule on (I know....I know...It's Halloween! But I didn't want folks getting bellyaches over too much junk!). 

We did some singing and brought out the requested chocolate cake. 

Candles were lit....

 and blown out. Now, let's just talk about this cake for one second. Rhett had requested my mom's chocolate cake. However, my mom was going out of town and I didn't want to bother her with it. SO, I decided I'd try to make it myself (her's is from scratch you know.) I did pretty good until it came to getting the cakes out of the pan and that's when it all came tumbling down....literally. So, while Rhett's cake may have looked a total disaster (as you can see clearly below) it was actually very tasty! I giggle because Rhett patted me on the back and said, "It's okay Mommy. You did your best." Thanks for the encouragement Little Buddy:) 

I love you Rhettiboo and I'll love you for 8x80 more years to come! 

Eleven!

Cade's eleven. What? Yes. Eleven. Next thing you know he'll be pulling out of the driveway in his own car ( it'll be a hoopty (more front and rear protection) from the late nineties built with a steel enforced roll bar across the top) and I'll be pulling my hair out wondering why in the world I ever set myself up for such worry. Ah, but right now, summer, poolside, friends.....we haven't much to worry about. Cade opted for his usual all day Party Palooza with his buds. This year throwing the pool into the mix was great fun! 

I spent most of the afternoon catering the children....bringing them lunch, making sure folks didn't dive where they weren't suppose to, sunscreening them (which made no difference whatsoever since I sent pretty much everyone home burnt to a crisp....another vote for Mother of the Year for me. I'm not doing to hot as of late!)

I tried to get one good group shot but it's really hard when people don't even get out of the pool long enough to let their fingers un-wrinkle. 

After hours of swimming we headed to Jonathan's for dinner.

 There were some antics but all in good fun:)

Then we were off to Sweet CeCe's for birthday dessert. Luckily we were the only folks in there so it wasn't totally humiliating to sing Happy Birthday to Cade before digging in.

Then it was back home. And just when you thought everyone was waterlogged, they jumped right back in and started playing the same ball game that they had played for the 6 hours prior to dinner. Hey...whatever makes you happy on your birthday, right?!  

It was a fantastic day with an even more fantastic group of boys. I truly adore each of them and I'm so thankful for the clan Cade is hanging with these days. I hope to keep them around! Happy 11th birthday, Cade! 

Year Number Three!

Princess Petunia turned three today. Her years are just rolling by with barely a chance for me to savor them! She's three going on 7 and does her best to keep up with her crazy brothers....and most of the time she's holding her own! I have so loved having a splash of pink (or should I say purple since that's the color she's crazy about!) in this family. Her request for months now for her birthday celebration was "a purple party at Moe's". Well, purple I can do, Moe's not as easy. Catering was quite costly and they don't really do parties there so we opted for Moe's meal pre-birthday and chicken nuggets for the actual day. And purple, we did LOTS of purple! 

Loraine's bakery provided chocolate cupcakes with purple m&m's. Perfect for a purple party! 

I did a really poor job capturing the purpleness of her party with my camera. I made purple tissue balls that were hanging from the ceiling as well. The cold, rainy day put a damper on my outdoor swim party:(

In keeping with tradition, I forgot to get candles. Luckily I had one purple one left from Grant's birthday back in February.....ummm, Mother of the Year. 

There were purple party favors and plenty of Chick-fil-a party hats to go around. We can always count on bff Carris to bring the sass to the party! 

Cake and ice cream....always her favorite!

Ms. Busibody didn't want to take time to get her picture made with anyone! Bobby snuck in a quick one though! 

Her birthday surprise from us was this mini trampoline. I thought as often as she goes rogue in gymnastics class (i.e. her entire class is walking the balance beam nicely and where's Lanie? Oh yeah....she's on the trampoline...again) she'd love having a little jump zone of her own at home. I was right! She was elated!

Quick pic with my birthday girl!

Present opening time! She got a little princess castle, a swimming Dora doll, some clothes and lots of other goodies! 

Auntie Love.

Despite the cool and the rain the bigger boys spent most of the time outside playing wall ball.

Well, until they caught wind of the party glasses!

Eliza got in on the party glasses too. I guess they were a hit no matter the age:)

Elaina and Cruz.

Party girls! 

I always love celebrating birthdays. While it's hard to watch the kids grow so quickly it's also a great reminder of the time God has given us with them. I hope and pray that we're throwing Elaina purple parties for years and years to come! Happy Birthday, Elaina!