Summer Birthdays

We celebrated JD's birthday a little late this year and had a combined party for him and Annabeth in August. We also ended up having a few friends as guests (which we don't normally do) and it was a lot of fun! The kids had a great time playing with their friends, swimming, and eating.

Annabeth has been asking for a playhouse for a long time. I couldn't find one used anywhere. When I saw this one on an Amazon Lightning deal I jumped on it. She didn't quite understand what it was when it was still in the box, but she loved it after Jerry and Justus put it together for her the next day!

 JD got a bike for his big birthday gift from us, but in all the craziness I didn't even snap one photo!

Pickle is Eight!

JD celebrated his 8th birthday this week! We decided to do a combined party with Annabeth this year so we didn't have his party yet. We just had a couple gifts and a cake at home.

It is a Shown Family tradition to let the birthday kid choose what to have for dinner. JD chose to go out to Old Country Buffet. Since we are frugal we made him wait until the next day to go out. Hey, kids eat for $1.99 on Thursdays instead of full price on Wednesday!

It's not a grown up favorite at our house, but the kids all love it. Annabeth (and all the brothers) enjoyed the cotton candy for dessert! Happy Birthday Pickle!

Birthday Boys

Well, after a short break we once again have a teenager in the house. Wesley turned 13 this year! For his birthday dinner he chose a trip to Old Country Buffet, but we made him go a day early on kids eat free night. :) On his real birthday, March 20, we had pizza and cupcakes.

Wesley is a great kid. He is an awesome big brother and my ever present helper. I can count on him to help with just about any task, usually with a good attitude. He doesn't have to yet, but he could run the house if I needed him to. He has a big heart, especially for little ones, and will be a wonderful husband and father some day. I am not even worried about his teen years!

We had planned to have a combined birthday party for Wesley, Eli, and Justus in February, but it just didn't work out. We ended up having one March 28th, which wasn't too late for Wesley, but was very late for the twins. Oh well, better late than never, right?

Here are the birthday boys...

Wesley

Eli

Justus

The AZ extended family came to celebrate with us. We went swimming which was a nice perk of having it a delayed party. There would not have been any swimming at a February party.

We will now have a teenager in the house until 2031 when Annabeth turns 20 and leaves the teen years of the Shown Family behind!

Eleven Times Two

The twins turned 11 today! I always say the days are long, but the years are short. Never do I think that more than on birthdays. I honestly can't believe my two tiny preemies are almost taller than me!

We started the day with donuts from the new Dunkin Donuts by our house. I don't even know when it officially started, but we have a tradition of donuts for breakfast on your birthday. We even popped in a few candles and sang Happy Birthday.

The boys took it easy most of the afternoon after church. We told them we'd take them out to dinner. Before we left we let them open their gifts and a couple cards. We are planning a combined birthday party in February so they will have to wait to get the rest of their gifts then.

We let them choose where to go out to dinner. It was a hard decision. Eli wanted Chinese and Justus wanted Mexican. We let them work it out and when we asked for their final decision they said Chili's. So that's where we went. The service was a bit of a bummer, but the food was good. The birthday boys enjoyed their huge burgers and that was the most important thing!

Eli's food art at Chili's

We came home and had cupcakes for dessert (and sang again)!

When it came time for them to blow out their candles Justus, ever the joker, blew out Eli's first then his own. He did it so fast Eli had no idea what even happened. We ended up re-lighting his candle so he could blow it out again himself!

Happy Birthday Eli and Justus!

Happy 9th Birthday Hayden!

Hayden entered his last year in single digits on November 20th! We let him choose where to go for dinner on his actual birthday. After thinking about it ALL day he finally decided a buffet of some kind would be best. There really isn't much to choose from in that regard these days so we ended up at Old Country Buffet or as Jerry likes to call it Scarf and Barf.

It ended up Thursday evenings are a good time to go to OCB. It's Kid's Night and kids eat for $.99 including a drink. So we only had to pay for three adult meals and the other 5 ate for $5. Plus there were a few activities and everyone got a balloon to take home too.

Before we left for dinner, we let him open his present from Mom and Dad. A digital camera! He has been asking for one for a very long time.

Saturday evening we had a little birthday party with the extended family. We had a taco/nacho bar followed by cake and ice cream, of course. A few of the family members couldn't make it so we had lots of extra food. We ended up having taco and nachos for dinner and lunch a few times this week.

Here is a little birthday boy collage I made to post on Facebook. This is what I said to go with it:

He is quiet, fiercely independent, and more artistic than all the rest of us put together. Oh and apparently indecisive… he's been trying to decide where to go for dinner all day!  Happy 9th Birthday, Hayden!

Happy Birthday Hayden! We love you!

Annabeth's Birthday Party

We had Annabeth's birthday party this afternoon. After church, we put her down for a nap and got to work. I finished making the food and got the decorations up. I did some prep work yesterday, so there wasn't too much left to do. I let Wesley stay up to help me make some of the decorations last night. The other brothers weren't too happy about Wesley staying up without them and Wesley said he was extra tired today.

Annabeth really doesn't have any favorite characters so I wasn't sure what to do for cake and decorations. Last year we did had an ice cream treat party. She doesn't really watch Sesame Street, but she does love one Cookie Monster video that we play for her on YouTube so I decided to go with a Cookie Monster theme. I spent a little time on the internet to get some ideas. This is what I came up with...

Cookie Monster and Cookie cupcakes. I had made Cookie Monster cupcakes before for JD, so that wasn't hard. For the "cookie" cupcakes I used a new recipe I found (thanks Pinterest) for moldable frosting. A quick Google search gave me the right mix of food coloring to make tan. (What would we do without the internet!?) Strange as it sounds, I rolled out the frosting and used a biscuit cutter to make the "cookie" and then pushed a few chocolate chips on for decoration. I've never used fondant but it seems like a less firm version of that. It gave me just the effect I was looking for!

We turned some blue balloons into Cookie Monsters and Wesley helped me make construction paper cookies to hang up. Saturday I had some of the boys color a few Cookie Monster coloring pages for decorations. I found a few to print too. A few more blue balloons and blue streamers and it was looking pretty festive.

I just used some of our paper on a roll to make a quick Happy Birthday sign and a sign that said "Cookie Maybe?" which is what Annabeth calls the Cookie Monster song.

After a quick swim, we came in to eat. Just like last year we decided on all appetizers for dinner. I made a few of our favorites (olive bread, taco dip, and fruit with fruit dip) and everyone else brought something as well. The birthday girl thoroughly enjoyed the bacon wrapped pretzels, blue kettle corn, and fruit!

I did fancy up one fruit tray to look like Cookie Monster, our blueberries were a little too dark but when I took this photo with the flash on, you could see it a bit better.

We sang to the birthday girl and she blew out the candles all by herself! I think she was a little surprised that she did it! Then she made a mess of herself eating her cupcake!

After getting cleaned up, Annabeth opened her gifts. She enjoyed the whole process of opening presents. She loved the first thing she opened and would have happily stopped there! But she was glad she kept going because she LOVED her new baby doll and baby crib! Every single photo of her opening presents is blurry because she wouldn't sit still!

It was a fun celebration for a sweet little girl! What a fast two years it has been. I wish I could freeze time!

Here's the song that inspired our party theme...