Birthdays, birthdays galore!

Today was my 2nd born's 18th birthday!

We celebrated as a family today with cake and presents :D

She already had her big surprise party over the weekend, but we are still planning to take her to dinner on Friday night at Oklahoma Joe's (she loves barbecue!)!

Jacob celebrated his 4th birthday yesterday.....

He's very "into" Transformers these days ;D

Transformer balloons, Transformer cake, Transformer decorations and even a Transformer scooter from big sister Sophie!!!

He's also loving trains these days, so big brother Noah got a fun train game for him!

Oh yeah, and Mighty Machines!  That was Emily's gift for Mr. Jacob :D  There's no doubt we have boys in our house!

We celebrated Jacob's birthday on 2 different days (we seem to do a lot of that).  We did cake and presents at our house on Tuesday, but we also went to Chuck E. Cheese's on Sunday!

We used to go to Chuck's all the time, but I quit going about 2 years ago and after Sunday's visit I remember why......

But I'll just leave it at that ;D  The Gang had a good time, and we got it out of our system (read....I have NO plans to go back ever any time soon!).

 Caleb was a first timer.....

And Jacob was treated like royalty ;D

But the big event of the evening was the famed Ticket Blaster....

Now, you may be wondering why that's a picture of Matthew in the Ticket Blaster and not Jacob......

Mr. Jacob refused to go in!  Poor guy, he really wanted nothing to do with Chuck E. either, but he did his best to try to put his brave face on and go over to get his crown from him!  There was no way that he was going to step foot in that blaster though ;D

Instead, he settled for some cotton candy while big brother Matthew took his place!

And he ate the WHOLE thing :D

You might be thinking wow, that's a lot of birthdays, and you would be right (Allie's birthday was November 4th).....but we're not done!  We still have Sophie's 16th birthday coming up this Sunday ;D

That's FOUR birthdays in ONE month's time :D

I know, I know......what WERE we thinking?!?!

Just because......

It's raining shingles.....

This is how the outside of our house looks right now.....

And my husband is in Atlanta interviewing for a job, so I'm on my own in dealing with all of this!

Everywhere I look I see ladders....

and pieces of our old roof hanging from trees.....

It's dangerous to walk out the door due to falling items.....

and nails all over the ground where we walk!  I'll be glad when this is over......hoping that's tomorrow at the latest!  Still hard to believe all the hail damage we sustained this past spring.  Between that and our "flood" inside, the entire house is practically brand new!

The outside of the house will get a new paint job as well, but we're not sure that will happen until spring.....if we still live here then.....

Surprise!!!

We've spent the last couple of weeks planning a surprise party for Emily for her 18th birthday!  On Saturday night, we were finally able to put our plan into action!  It was a tough weekend to plan a party as so many people were out of town for the holidays, but with the help of one of Emily's best friends, we managed to wrangle up a small group of girls!

We took Emily & all the boys out to "run errands" and eat dinner, leaving Allie & Sophie home to hang decorations and hide the guests as they arrived......

We decided to have everyone hide out in Em's room because we knew she would probably head in there first when we arrived home.....

Allie took all the pictures for me since I wasn't there when Emily walked in!

Sophie flung open the door & they all shouted "SURPRISE!"

                                                                         And

                                                                                I

                                                                          think

                                                                             we

                                                                          pulled

                                                                              it

                                                                            off!!!!

                                                  Happy 18th Birthday Emily!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanksgiving 2011 with The Gang

This weekend has been crazy busy for us with Thanksgiving, decorating for Christmas, Christmas shopping and a big surprise party for Emily (details to come in another post!)!

When we first talked about celebrating Thanksgiving this year, I had my mind set on NOT doing any of the cooking, opting instead to have dinner at Cracker Barrel ;D

That didn't go over too well with the girls.

After lots of complaining (me not wanting to cook with no extended family coming to visit and the girls not wanting to eat out!), I grudgingly agreed to have our Thanksgiving Day dinner at home, provided the GIRLS do all the work ;D

And they happily agreed!

Of course, I was still around to supervise, but it was nice to begin to pass the torch a bit!  I handed out the cooking assignments...... Sophie got the stuffing and the sweet potatoes......

Allie had the potatoes and creamy corn.....

Zack got to do the turkey!

He had a very captive audience for the carving ;D

Jacob & Matthew were so excited to add the brown sugar, marshmallows & pecans to the sweet potatoes!

Emily was assigned the pumpkin pies & cranberry relish which she was able to prepare the day before, so she was able to enjoy the parade on t.v. for a while....

With her new pet at her feet (Caleb thinks he's a dog these days!)....

The kids did some fun arts and crafts while we waited for the turkey to cook!  This hand tree was Sophie's idea :D

And of course we had hand turkeys!

They also played some games.....

We ended up eating dinner earlier than planned (like at noon!) because hubby put the turkey in super early....

YUMMY food :D

Sophie has been playing with her olives since she was about 3 years old!

After dinner, we headed out to see a movie..... a family tradition that we started when the girls were little.  This year, we saw Arthur Christmas!  It was great, and I would recommend it if you haven't seen it :D

When we got home, Sophie whipped up some cream.....

to top off our homemade pumpkin pie!

Caleb loved it!