Yo Ho Mateys Away {Birthday Edition}

This past weekend we celebrated the kids' birthdays with none other than a Jake and the Never Land Pirates Party. Are you surprised? Didn't think so.

It was a duel party.
1. Because I can and it makes momma's life easier. 2. Because they are exactly 1 month apart and 3. Because the level of obsession they both possess for Jake and the NLP may require counseling at some point.

{The Invite}

Also this is the FIRST ever real, we are inviting friends par-tay. It was a Y pool party, fitting right?!

{The cake}
Made by yours truly. :) Remember guys jealousy is un-becoming, I can't help my mad cake skills. ::insert sarcasm:: At least my 4 year old daughter thought it rocked and that is all that matters.

Leighton is making some weird face and MW absolutely.always.refuses.family. pics when GPs are around. It is beyond maddening, but my motto is "go with the flow" I am NOT going to force a cranky, naughty, screaming child to take a picture and ruin it for the "good" child. So there you have it no birthday boy with his cake.

{The party}
We had the room for 30 minutes before swim time. I personally didn't think it was enough time to eat cake and hang out, but I guess all the kids cared about anyway was swimming.

{Candles}
The Y provided the other much nicer cake, but since they didn't do Jake I had to.

{Pool Time}
Here's a neat little story from the day.
So our Y's boiler has gone down probably 3x in the last month. With the 3rd time being Par-TAY day.
I get a call at 12 {after I had finished icing their fantabulous Jake cake} telling me this fantastic bit of news. In their defense they were helpful and came up with some suggestions, just none that would be workable for a bunch of 4 and unders.
We were a bit upset. Finally they decided they WOULD re-open the pool and told us it just may be cold. Oh, okay no biggie, said nobody ever. Chad wanted to post-pone. I didn't. I figured we could end up in this same boat in 2 weeks, I said we will just go and make the best of it. I prayed all afternoon that somehow, someway God would fix that boiler and/or keep the water warm. HE did. The water was way warmer than I imagined it would be and the kids didn't seem to mind at all...as Lo and Avery had to be drug from the water to go home 1.5 hours later. HA!

My dad actually took all of the pool pictures. I was really impressed on what he took and how he orchestrated a bunch of good photo ops. Thanks dad! I really appreciate it!!

My friends seriously have some of the cutest kids I know!
Ezra and MW are like 2 peas in a pod. Ezra is just so cute! and squishy!

My favorite red headed boy. I can't believe how much I love that hair now, but it is starting to blonde up.

Trying out a new editing action...Auntie Meg is the best. She jumped right in there with the kids. This momma just stood on the sidelines. I am a wuss.

He may not have wanted a cake picture, but he wouldn't leave my side for long at the pool, so we grabbed this "family" pool pic. Lo didn't want to be bothered with picture taking.

After awhile we did wrangle her into a picture, but this is the best we got. I actually love it, it is us.

I am 4!

Tired love bear. MW had been battling croup all week. I asked our doc and he said as long as he was fever free for 24 hours he could go. He was, but he is still worn out by it.

When these cute little girls got cold they would go and sit by the sauna door to "warm up!"

I am telling cute cute and CUTE kids!

One of the prettiest little girls I know.

My besties, from HS. Here we are 12 years and 2 kids each later and at times it is like no time has passed at all! I love these girls!!

Party goers.

Leighton found the rock wall and proceeded to climb it.

After the pool party we headed home with the GPs to eat pizza and open gifts.
What's that Lo? You got WAY too many gifts and don't need another thing for the rest of your life?!
Oh, except money for your college fund?! Sounds like a great idea. Glad you thought of it. :)

Seriously?! We have great friends and family, but this may have been overkill.

Oh course they received the rest of the Jake and the NLP stuff on the market as predicted. Should have bought stock in that. Dang it. MW LOVING this sword!! Loving. PS isn't his puffer vest adorbs?!?!

My neighbor seriously put craftiness to shame with the stuff she comes up with. This was to die for. Photo shoot here we come!

This car mat is a huge hit around here, takes up an entire living room, but it has provided tons of entertainment around here!

My cute little pirate.

It was a great party. We were definitely blessed by family and friends. I am so glad I had the joint party and will probably continue to do so until it just doesn't work anymore. Scratch that I may not always have a "real" party for the kids every year, sometimes less is more and simple is peaceful. But this was definitely fun and I am so glad we did it! 

Happy 2nd Birthday Buddy! AND Happy 4th Birthday  my sweet girl. We love you both so much and proud of the two little people you are turning into!

Love Mommy and Daddy

Compassion

I am still recovering from our birthday weekend and still editing and trying to formulate some type of post. I am a little bloggy-ied out. (is that a real word?!)

Anyway, do any of you listen to Way-FM?!
Right now they are doing a push to get kids particularly from Indonesia sponsored for Compassion International. Yeah, it can be a tad annoying to listen to them go on and on. Normally I am annoyed and flip stations, but not this time. Everytime I hear them talk about a child my heart just aches and prays that someone will sponsor that child!

Right before Christmas Chad and I felt very led to sponsor a child.
If I may back up a bit, I honestly have had adoption tugging on my heart strings. Now if you know me, adoption was not something I felt like I could ever do. I support those who do and can, but that just wasn't for us. However, watching a friend from HS go to China to get her baby girl just about did me in. It sort of was my moment of knowing that we actually could do this.

I really struggled with both of my kids when they were babies. There isn't a pretty way to say it; they were HARD infants. The crying that never stopped, the constant need to be bounced and held while standing wore me out. Then during my time in Judgement House an older lady in my scene told me she had adopted 2 foster kids. Her son was around 2 when she got him. He was suppose to be adopted by another family, but at the last minute decided he was "too difficult" to deal with, so the sent him back! I am crying just thinking about that. They sent him back like some item you return to Target. This is a child, a person, not an article of clothing. She said when they got him "there was nothing wrong with him and he was NOT difficult."

I couldn't help but think how difficult my kids were. Why did all my friends (so it seemed) get "easy" babies, at least once? And while at times I joked about putting them up for adoption, I could never. They were mine in all their messy glory. To think there are kids out there just wanting someone to love them breaks my heart. Sometimes I think I got "hard" babies for a reason, maybe to prepare me to see past a "difficult" child and see who they really are.

I didn't really tell Chad of my thoughts on adoption because I didn't really feel like it was the time. I just prayed about it by myself instead.

Fast forward a few months to December and out of the clear blue sky Chad says we NEED to sponsor a child. I was shocked. I told him I agreed and while maybe one day I would like to adopt a child, this was a place to start caring about the less fortunate kids out there.

We now sponsor the cutest little girl from Brazil. {I am not sure I should/can post her picture} She and Leighton are just months apart. When I saw her sweet face, she looked just like Leighton and I knew she would be "our girl." I hope and pray our sponsorship will bring her a better life and most importantly her and her family to Jesus.

Source: compassion.com via Michele on Pinterest

So I write all this to ask you to prayerfully consider sponsoring a child. It cost hardly anything around $40/month. That is going out to eat one time or cutting out your fancy coffee most mornings. Our kids just got done raking in all the latest and greatest toys for their birthdays and Christmas and quite frankly I am over it. If they never got another toy again it would be too soon. We are really trying to focus on instilling in our kids that stuff doesn't matter and there are "unfortunate" kids out there that are lucky if they have 1 toy their whole childhood. I want to teach our kids to be the hands and feet of Jesus and give back and be grateful for what they have.

GO HERE to check out the list of kids just dying to get a sponsorship.

The Birthday Boy and Photo shoot

We have a Birthday Boy in our house. The BIG party is next weekend, but we still wanted him to feel special on his big day.

Birthday Pancakes, his fav!

Birthday cupcakes.

More birthday cake...

Presents. Shocker a Jake and the NLP toy.

Then a little photo shoot...

I think he looks just like his daddy in these. That is all daddy's smile.

 

Of course Micah was being all weird and zoning out every time we went to take  his photo, so sissy had to show him how it is done...so here is her 4 year photos.

This photo reminds me of the one I took last year. My goal is to get a new one every year I can con them into it. But I am not sure it will ever top the first one. I am so in love with that picture.

Daddy on the 32 yard line...he didn't want to be left out of the birthday photos. :)

 

Of course I have several more, but maybe another day.