The Birthday Party

Another birthday season has come and gone. That always brings relief tinged with plenty of emotion over my babies being yet another year older. With all that we have going on right now, it was nice to have their party at Chuck E. Cheese's just so there was nothing to worry about other than getting them dressed and picking up the cake (which Gran actually took care of for me!). I really wasn't feeling well all day, but a mommy can't miss her own kids' birthday party so of course I was there. We made some birthday memories, I hope!

It's the monkeys with ol' Chuck himself right after the birthday show.
(It's funny how much John David's teeth resemble Chuck E.'s teeth!)

Here's Little with one of his school friends, Samuel, dancing together during the show.

Silly friends - Samuel, John David, Kelen, and Aidan....and for the record, those glasses on top of John David's head are his laser tag glasses he randomly decided to wear for the day.

Julia and her friend Madison. (This little girl is the reason Julia longed for curly hair for sooooo long. She finally got her wish since Mommy and Daddy bought her the special curling iron for her birthday!)

Cameron, Morgan, and Julia - happy girlies.

Sister love...

Renee, Andrew, and Timothy gave both of the kids their own gift card to Walmart. Does it get any better than that? Julia already spent hers today on a Littlest Pet Shop set.

Julia's teacher, "Mrs. Anchez" (as Julia says), gave Julia a Webkinz kitty. Can you see the pure delight on her face? She named it Amalia. There is never a shortage of fairy tale-ish sounding names around here.

Daddy and Joshua were mostly just trying to stay out of the way.

Hey! I'm there! See? It's me in a picture!

I think we were singing happy birthday in this shot.

This is Ronnie, one of the kids' friends from church. She actually had a massive head injury during this past year and had to have emergency brain surgery. She had a miraculous recovery and we were so happy she was with us for the party!

Julia's friend, Azariah, gave her lots of jewelry that she has been quite thrilled about. There was a best friend necklace set and yesterday, after telling her what the different words on the jewelry said, Julia came in to see me. She handed me the necklace that said "Best" and said, "Here, Mommy. You can have this one because you are the best mommy in the whole wide world!" And then I got the sweetest kiss you can imagine.

The boy in the red shirt is Tommy and he's John David's friend from church. His family doesn't have very much so he sold some of his toys to get some money to give John David for his birthday. He was also excited about giving him tickets he won during the party. Isn't that the sweetest thing? (There was also another little boy who came who couldn't afford a present, but his dad works at Walmart so he brought John David a container of bakery cupcakes!)

Julia's friend, Cameron, gave her this shirt and you would have thought Julia had won the lottery. She was so excited about it and put it on when we got home from the party. I finally pried it off her body tonight so I could wash it. She had even been sleeping in it!

Happy Birthday, Babies!!!