Party Time!

We celebrated Josiah’s third birthday and Elijah’s first  birthdays with a simple, yet fun bash last weekend.  Josiah had been looking forward to his tractor cake since I asked him what he’d like well over a month ago.  I finally settled on a red tractor for him pulling a trailer full of hay for Elijah.  It didn’t quite turn out at nice as I had hoped, but everyone got the idea :)  Jacob cooked hot dogs and hamburgers and we threw in some sides and that was it.  It turned out good and the company was great!  The weather, however, was not cooperative and we had downpours before and during the party.  Thankfully we had planned it at Grandma’s house and she has enough space under cover to make that ok, so it didn’t ruin anything.

Since I didn’t take a single picture, I am still in the process of collecting them from people.  So far I don’t even have many of my own boys!  I’ll have to add more later.

Adeline and Esther had just come from a tea party so they were wearing beautiful dresses and fun makeup!

 Henry is getting good at walking!

Uh oh!  I hope their mom didn’t mind dirty dresses!

Addy hanging with the boys.  Again, sorry about the dresses, Suzanne :)

CAKE TIME! Happy birthday to you…

Elijah’s first taste of cake!  He started eating it one sprinkle at a time :)

 

Mmmm…got some on the back of my hand…mmm.

I love these pictures of kids excitedly waiting for cake.  It reminds me of pictures of my own birthday parties as a kid.

Now that I see these pictures, I can see in his eyes he was not feeling good here.  I guess this was the start of his symptoms.  Great birthday present, huh?

  Josiah likes to eat just the icing.  The black coloring I used for the icing on the tires was nasty yet ALL the kids wanted it desperately!  Here’s Josiah devouring his.

Here are some more black icing-stained faces.  It came out of my clothes with Shout stain remover (my best laundry friend) so hopefully it didn’t cause too many problems :)

My baby shares with Mommy.

Almost done!This boy knows what to do with that fork!  He enjoyed his cake.

PRESENTS!  

We have such a wonderful group of friends and family who we are beyond blessed to have help us celebrate our little boys and who showered them with gifts.  We thank you all for joining us and for your generosity.

There must have been something in the water at our church.  These are just a few of the babies born within four months pictured oldest to youngest (left to right – Henry, Oliver, Elijah, Karis, Erika (I promise she has a head!) and Jordan).  The four on the left are all within our Sunday School class with Karis being the lone girl!  I think we should have taken this picture at the beginning of the party.

 

I always wonder if people enjoy the chaos of our birthday parties, but my mom made the point that many of the same people keep coming every year :)  We have a good time, I think!

Here is an album if you want to see more of your kids:

View Full Album

Strawberries, Anyone?

Josiah had been begging to go strawberry picking since well before the U-pick season even opened.  Finally, after he nearly cried when passing Roger’s Farms on the way home from the grocery store last week a couple days after it opened, I promised him we’d go as soon as Daddy got home from work.  I was already swamped with things to do since their birthday party was in a couple days and I wondered what I was thinking giving myself MORE to do, but by the time Jacob got home we only had about 30 minutes to pick so I figured we couldn’t pick too many in that time.  I was wrong.  We picked 5 buckets full!  (Something like 32 pounds, I think)  Thankfully my Mom pitched in and washed while I sorted and processed.  Now I have lots of frozen and fresh berries.  I will need to go a time or two more to get enough to last us the year, but it was a good start and we had a blast!

I worried how it would be with two little kids in tow, but Elijah stayed content in his stroller which was surprisingly easy to push between the rows, and Josiah alternated between picking berries and pushing the stroller, so it worked out well.

Our loot!  Very nice berries, don’t you think?

Proud pickers!  This was right before Elijah reached over to grab one.  He loves strawberries!