Birthday Fun

 Holy Moley it's been a busy week!  

Monday was my 41st birthday.  We had pineapple upside down cake and nachos for dinner.  David helped me blow out my candles and he wrapped up a couple of his cars to give me so I could play cars with him.  He and daddy wrapped them up in the morning, so he was excited all day about getting me to open my presents!  

These are just David being cute.  My dad sent some bread home with us when we went down to visit - and David loved it!  (so did the rest of us!)  

David wants to spend all of every day "playing cars."  Sometimes that actually means playing with the cars - sometimes it just means, "come play with me mommy."   On Tuesday it actually meant playing with cars since we needed to play with the cars he wrapped up for me.  :)  

Wednesday was Evelyn's 11th birthday.  She had Butter Chicken for her birthday dinner and sheet cake for her cake.  She got some really cute clothes from Grandma and Grandpa Jones and a fuzzy sweater, a stuffie backpack and fidget cube from mom and dad.   

Eileen and Anna wanted to re-do their hair to get the color brighter - I thought they looked awfully funny with their hair in cups waiting.  

She and her friends wanted to do a baking competition - I was a little worried about how it would all work out - but it ended up working out ok.  Some of the girls had more experience than others, so they needed a bit of supervision and we had to stagger baking of the cookies.  They had a blast and made a mess and then we took plates with one of each cookie to have all the parents judge (Dan judged for our family since I knew who had baked what so I wasn't impartial)  Emily and Leah ended up tying, but all the cookies tasted great!  

After we finally finished all the cookie baking and judging, the girls convinced all their parents to sleep over at our house.  Evie had passed out by 10:30 while the other girls were still awake - but they had a great time and Evie loved getting to spend some time with her friends before the move.  

Saturday started out with waffles and lots of girls.  Then after lunch, Evelyn with out for ice cream with Grandma and Grandpa for her birthday.  Evie also got to talk to her adopted grandma Sister Cottrell.  Then in the afternoon, we took the whole family and headed down to Medieval Times for a fun evening together!  The kids loved it - even David was enthralled and James was crazy excited for the whole thing.  Evie got one of the flowers after our champion won an event, and we all had a wonderful time!  

I got to play organ this week for church and of course that meant some practice time too.  Before church on Sunday, I had the kids get their yearly picture taken.  James was reluctant, but quick and easy.  Aaron was quick and easy and liked it when I had him take a picture with his vampire teeth showing.  James wanted his picture taken over and over and over, then wanted to get into everyone's pictures and of course, he wanted to see all the pictures too!  Evelyn was easy once I got her to tilt her head in a way that would remove the glare on her glasses.  Anna was the easiest of all.  Eileen just tried not to laugh at me while I told her to think of cute fuzzy moths and caterpillars so that I could get a nice smile out of her - she hates smiling! Oddly enough my favorite picture of the bunch is not a big smile, but the picture is just so her.    I sure do have cute kids though!  

We also took a headshot of Dan - we need proof that once his hair was this long.  He likes the first one better because he is all dressed up and looking stylish, but I just love the second one - It was taken before I took the kids pictures just to get the lighting in a good place.  The smile is just so genuine! 

I'm certainly not the best photographer, but this was fun and I like how they came out - and it's much cheaper and easier.  

Church was wonderful - but Dan and I were exhausted, so we took an afternoon nap, then after dinner we played some games with the kids.  

Dan and I are spending spare time packing.  We are trying to get to say goodbye to all our friends.  We are trying to get the kids school work done.  I'm ready for this all to be done.  We spent some time trying to nail down our trip out to Oregon and figuring out how it will work out and where we will be when.  We had hoped to stop by Paul and Candace's house in Utah, but that is looking like it won't happen.  Paul may have COVID, which worries us for him and his family, for now he is just quarantining, but either way, we won't be staying there.