Birthday Girls

Last week is a big birthday week in our family - within four days, we have Tori, Alayna and Bella's birthday. Tori turned 10 and Bella turned 5! I'm hoping that it's not obvious how blurry this picture is, because they were all that way for some crazy reason.  

  
We took Tori to CiCi's pizza on Sunday for her birthday lunch and then we ended up at Chick Fil A on Bella's birthday night, so it was a lot of eating and a lot of cake!

It would have been nice if we had closed the messy pantry door before we took Bella's birthday pictures, but we didn't think of that.

We took a new approach to birthday presents this week - we took the girls to Toy's R Us and let them choose their own gifts; that was a first just from the reality that we just had Christmas and they did not need anything. The kids all thought it was fun, however, and have requested the same treatment; I may or may not regret the trend setting.

  
Just for fun, check out my cool Starbucks mug from Singapore; I don't drink coffee but seem to have developed a Starbuck mug issue. Gabriel also sent the kids green KitKat's from Asia; they look really cool but didn't taste that great!

  
One more just for fun photo that is unrelated - this is our living room around 9:00 a.m. The kids all drag their blankets out with them in the morning and then the pets move in for their morning nap. If you really want to sit, we have a few more couches downstairs.

Birthday Cook Out

 If I had any time at all, I could write about 10 blog posts - but I've had NO TIME and am way behind in several areas of life. Even in the crazy hurry, we have had some recent summer fun. One event was a cook out in honor of our late July birthdays. I let Julia and Elijah each have a few friends over to celebrate; a few friends, with their families, quickly turns into a crowd. Thankfully, the weather was beautiful and we all had a great time. 

I'm so hoping we can upgrade our small front yard pool for a large back yard pool next year! There just isn't room for everyone!

  
We had two little babies at the party. It was so cute to see how much they enjoyed each other!

Alei and Moriah with the smallest guests

 We have some exciting news to share in the next few days - can't wait!

Easter and Birthday

 Easter morning we ate breakfast at camp and said good-bye to new friends.

 This cutie is from Kenya; she enjoyed playing with the big kids.

These college volunteers were Selah and Bella's best friends. They spent as much time with them as they could.

Of the two pictures I took, this was the better one of Bella.

 After good-bye time, we dressed for church and cleaned out our cabin. Dan came to spend a last few minutes with the kids.

 As we were leaving camp, they gave each child an impressive Easter basket. I made them wait until home to open them.

 I seriously did six loads of laundry on Sunday night and another 12 loads on Monday. Tuesday was my birthday and I spent the morning with Elijah and Bella at our last day of Classical Conversations. Then I took Moriah, Alyssa and Tori to Chipotle for a girls lunch out. I'm most unimpressed with how I look in this picture, but it's the only one I took.  
  

Mom, Moriah and Alyssa

  Tori is quickly moving into the big girl category.

Tori, Moriah and Alyssa

Now, I am back to the basement. I'm feeling the pressure to start my garden so I need to wrap it up down there!

Double Birthday

July 27th is always a big deal at our house since it's both Julia and Elijah's birthday. I want to post the picture of Julia holding Elijah just hours after he was born on her second birthday, but my main computer died and JD is working on it. With all that's been going on, I took a break from hair (and JD from fixing the computer) and we took the kids to the movies to see Monsters University. It is way, way less expensive at the base theater, but still a rare treat to go to the movies. It was Selah and Bella's first trip, and as we were waiting in line, Selah said, "what is this place?" Bella slept through it, but everyone else enjoyed it. We are planning on going to see Despicable Me 2 in a few weeks, but I warned everyone today that we will not be repeating the whole popcorn and soda scenario of today. We could have had pizza for dinner instead of the popcorn - what a rip-off.

Heading out to the movies - the other kids went too, these were just the batch ready when I whipped out the camera and included the birthday duo.

We were ready to go with presents when we got home from the movies. Elijah dove right in.

Julia was a bit more refined - 

We had a dinner of pigs-in-the-blankets, curly fries and watermelon before we dove on the cup-cakes. I made Julia pretty girl ones and Elijah chocolate. He decided that he wanted them to be dirt cup-cakes at the last minute, so we stopped to get oreos and gummy worms to top the cup-cakes. The store didn't have gummy worms, so we made a dirt mountain and had gummy bears, which made the little Buddy happy.

Hard to believe that my baby boy is five! He woke up (in my bed) this morning, jumped up and looked down at this legs. He them said to himself, "huh, I thought I'd look bigger since I'm five. Then he laid back down.

Julia still loves all things girlie; I love that about her. Bella agrees, eveyday I get her dressed, she says, "hey, Mom, how about a skirt?"

They were enjoying the singing moment.

They laughed when half us sang Julia then Elijah in the song while others sang Elijah and Julia. 

Right on cue, the birthday candles were blown and the cupcakes inhaled. 

   

We are going to have more more birthday celebration with Aunt Deb, Alyssa and another family that shares a birthday in over a week when Alyssa is home! No one minds one more round of cake!

                                                                              Jenny                                              

The Big Rat (and Salsa Estimate)

 Last night we took Julia and Elijah to Chuck E. Cheese while everyone else attended the first night of VBS - they haven't been in two years and we had promised them a trip for their birthdays. We had a good time in spite of my back really acting up and Elijah being scared enough of "the big rat" that he didn't want off of JD's lap for the first 30 minutes. 

I finally have a final salsa price comparison if there is anyone out there that really is interested. I only paid 50 cents a pound for the tomatoes and 88 cents a pound for the green peppers. With those prices, it ended up costing $1.64 a quart. It's definitely cheaper than any you can buy and tastes way better - it's just a lot of work! Since I made about 75 quarts, I still put a lot of money into salsa this year, so I'm going to try and grow green peppers next year and make salsa as I have tomatoes. I have been straight canning my tomatoes all year, so I also have lots of cans for chili or soup bases put up also. 

Finally

 I have had some serious computer problems for over a week. The last few blogs, it worked long enough to download my pictures and then blog from the lap-top, but yesterday it wouldn't do anything. JD spend last night scanning and deleting things and once he cleared the cookies attached to Internet explorer, it seems to be working fine. I hope so...we have dealt with a constant stream of broken things that are fairly new that shouldn't be breaking!


We held our cook-out, swim party on Sunday for Julia, Elijah and Elijah's little friend, Kole. The kids had a great time and the weather was wonderful for it. 


Kole and Elijah - 

With my demanding weekend, I don't know why I agreed to decorating a cake for each of them...but I did. Julia wanted a watermelon cake and it was pretty easy. 

Elijah saw a dinosaur cake in a kid's cook book that he wanted. I figured if I kid could do it, so could I. WRONG - you would have to have a boy genius to make that cake. First of all, they tell you to cut the round cake into eight pieces to form the legs, etc, but don't really lay out how to. Secondly, it just doesn't work to frost butchered cakes - that's why they sell the cake pans in shapes (Duh, I knew this but blindly followed the book that is on its way to the thrift store). 


Once I frosted the mess of a dinosaur and the cake was flaking up into the frosting, Elijah said, "but I didn't want it speckled with chocolate." Neither did I, Buddy, but that is the reality we are looking at for your 4th birthday cake. 


It doesn't look too terrible from this angle - 

But, now, you can see it's face. It resembles something that was hit by a car. Nothing like a road-kill dino to ring in your 5th year of life. 

We sang, we ate, and everyone had a good time. 

This picture is tacked on because Elijah ran to me yesterday yelling, "Mom, come see, get your camera, come on, it's going to be so exciting." The great excitement is that he can sit on the scooter that we were just given without falling, thanks to the kick stand he discovered. Now I need to look into buying a battery for it so it can move as well as sit. 

My 100 pounds of tomatoes are coming in this morning, so I will be busy making salsa today and tomorrow! 

 

Birthday, Road Trip and Swim Meet

 Alyssa turned 13 on Monday; it's hard to believe that she is the youngest of my "original four" children. She was the last biological until Elijah arrived on the scene nine years later. We attended foster parent classes right when Alyssa was turning three and it's been a bit crazy ever since. I didn't get a single decent picture of her, but I have the opportunity to try again tomorrow night when her friends invade the house for a 13th birthday party. 

Gabriel, Alayna and Alayna's brother are on a road trip to Memphis, then on to Colorado. They waited until the morning after Alyssa's birthday to leave since we are down to the final few months before Gabriel leaves with the Navy and we can no longer count on him at birthday times. 

Last night was our first swim meet and it was super hot! The heat index was like 105 as the meet began. It was still hot at 10:00 when the meet ended. Julia and Elijah had a great time on the play-ground and it was nice for me to watch the meet without them sitting on me in the heat (my friend's daughter watched them). 

Julia did swim her one event. She seems so little to be a second year swimmer, but she does a decent job.

The kids did pretty well and did walk away with some 1st place ribbons. 

Ben's Birthday

I wrote this blog yesterday, but for some reason Blogger wouldn't post it. So, I'm covering Ben's birthday one more time. There's a ton of other stuff going on that I'll sum up tomorrow - I wanted to give Ben turning 11 its own post. We have traditionally alternated a birthday plan of every other year a party and the other year a family activity. Sometimes that activity is as simple as ordering pizza, but this year Ben really wanted to go roller skating. Since I don't think some of the younger kids had ever been, it was a really fun idea for all of us. 


When I contacted the skating rink, I found out that Thursday is the least expensive night. So, JD came home from work a bit early and we did presents, dinner and cake and then headed out.

The rink had skating on one side and mats and trampolines on the other which was especially nice for Julia and Elijah who had a tough time skating. 

And a good time was had by all!