Remembering Moses on his birthday

Yesterday was our sweet Moses' birthday.  Its very hard to believe it has been a whole year since he died.  I thought a lot about him and am still thinking a lot about him.  I wonder what adventures he is on with Daddy God in heaven.  I ask God often to give him hugs and kisses for me and 2 tell him that I love him.  There is a sweetness that comes along with the sorrow and tears now.  For me, that's a good thing.  We didn't do anything as far as celebrating his birthday yesterday because its still so much of a memorial situation.  I would like for us to celebrate him in a special way in future years, though I don't know what that looks like yet.  So for now, since I can't honestly say happy birthday, I'm going to just say, "Sweet remembrances, precious Moses."

It would have been about this time...

My due date, Moses' birthday would have been right about this time...I'm really missing him right now.  He's not here with us to be a part of our daily routine or special fun things we go do as a family.  My heart is just so full of feeling every bit of his absence.  I have several friends who are having babies in this time frame.  Of course I don't begrudge them their happiness at welcoming their new little ones into their families, but it makes me very sad that I am not able to share in that type of joy now.  I hope that one day, seeing a mother and her newborn won't cause my heart to grieve quite so heavily and I'll be able to freely rejoice with those bringing new life into this world.  It also hasn't helped that I've been so busy lately that I haven't had a lot of time to myself and haven't really been able to grieve very much.  Mostly late at night when I'm already exhausted.  At least its something...every little bit counts and helps.  Even though it has been 5 months, its still as raw and present as ever.  Again, I don't think it will ever lessen, so much as I will learn how to do life including it better.  Well, at least at times.

Lately, I've been asked quite a lot by random people how many children I have.  I have been at a loss as to how I should respond.  On the one hand, I don't ever want it to seem like Moses didn't exist or that he doesn't count in an incredibly huge way in our family and specifically my heart, but on the other....well, I don't always feel like explaining myself or getting into details that still hurt so very much.  Sam came up with a good way of saying it, I think.  We have one child at home and four here with us. :)  I may get more than I bargain for in response to that, but I'm going to see how it fits.  It may be more than I can really deal with at this point, but then again it may be exactly what I need to say.

So, Happy might have been Birthday to my sweet little Moses.  I love you and miss you.

Happy Birthday, Zekers!!!

Zekes turns 6!!!!  It is so exciting to be a part of Zekey's journey through life.  He's such a laid back, easy-going, tender-hearted, sweet, caring fellow.  This year he wanted a transformers birthday and after looking at several examples of cakes, he saw one he liked and I told him what I could actually do. ;)  Since his birthday fell on a Saturday this year, Sam was there the whole day and he made Zekey's birthday breakfast.  Sausage patties hold up candles pretty well. :)

I have decided I like the homemade marshmallow fondant much better than the store bought stuff.  I like using it for embellishments much better than trying to cover anything large, though. :)

 Zekey really loves when he is the center of attention.  LOVES.

These are not the best pics, but I was laughing just a tad at his success in keeping his sister from blowing out his candles.  She actually blew them out the first go round, so we relit them and gave it another go.  Hahahaha!

Braden is 9!

Happy birthday to our smart, kind, clever, inventive, fun, funny, silly, brave, energetic, thoughtful, wonderful boy-o!  We are pretty sure that life somehow got fast-forwarded while we weren't looking and you just jumped to being 9. :)  We love you so much and are so blessed that God gave you to us so we can walk beside you in this life.  What anadventure we have had so far and what an adventure is still to come!  We release showers of blessing and wisdom and love over you in abundance!  Oh, happy day!

Braden wanted a NASA birthday.  Again, no invite-everyone-and-go-way-over-the-top party for this year.  That's next year's craziness. ;)  I did decorate and do it up boy-style.  We don't want anything too girly in this house for boy birthdays.  Just ask the boys if you don't believe me. :)  Braden helped me hang some stuff and he was very specific in the planning part of it all.  I really like it when the kids are that involved with their party planning.  I'm looking forward to when they get even more involved.  Let's just say that there should be no excuse for any of them not being able to pull off surprise parties and all the fullness thereof when they are older! ;)

Don't you love it when you can use a 40% AND 50% off coupon at michael's at the same time?!  Me, too!  I got a few things there including these cake wires:

In my perusal of the cake decorating aisle, I came across and find that I am in want of this baby in the not-so-far-off future:


I also got a few things at Hobby Lobby (totally busted out the 40% off coupon there, too. :)  I'm loving the paper lanterns and pinwheel thingymabobs lately.  I printed off the space shuttles and the garland and viola! just enough deco for a 9-year-old boy. :)

 First, we had his birthday breakfast.  He chose to have pancakes with only peanut butter chips in his.

 We all really liked how the cake turned out looking....the actual cake part, though, was NOT impressive.  This was actually the second failed attempt.  I was trying to make the raspberry lemon cake from Taste of Home, but it doesn't do well in anything other than several shallow round or square pans.  Eh, it would work in sheet cake form, too.  I tried to cook it in my pampered chef batter bowl first so that I could have the dome shape, but it never got done in the middle and the outside got burned.  So, when I was at Michael's, even though I had decided not to get a special pan, I went ahead and got the ball pan and tried it again in that.  It still didn't get done in the middle!  Ugh!  More like a gelatin than cake which makes for a very unpleasant experience.  Bummer.  The planets were pretty good though.  I just made them from rice crispy treats and marshmallow fondant and then used gel food coloring mixed with almond extract to paint them.  A special thanks to Kristen H. for helping me cover the planets in the fondant!  It would have taken me fo'evah otherwise.  I picked up some better Duff paint brushes while I was at it. (I'm starting to see a trend here... ;)  Next time, I'll just turn a plain yellow cake into lemon yumminess or maybe a lemon pound cake...mmmmmm.  Braden is a lemon fanatic, too. :)

The silliness is strong with this one!

Everyone was excited about getting their own planet to eat. :)

Braden said the best part was when I took him by himself to the store and said that he could choose what he wanted up to $10.  (He also got an Academy gift card later.)  Let me tell you, this kid bargain shopped!  He found that green dart gun in the pics on the clearance shelf for $4.48, got a few extra bullets for it on the clearance shelf for $1.98 and then went and got three hot wheels cars for $.97 a piece.  He was excited about his haul AND about not spending the whole $10!  These are exciting times, folks!  It will be a beautiful day when I get him all in to couponing. ;)  (He does already have a grasp on the Hobby Lobby coupon...it has begun:)

Happy Birthday, Brea!

Our little ooo-baby turned 2!  Seriously, time is just ticking right along!

Brea's birthday was a fun affair.  We mostly just chilled and kept saying happy birthday to her.  It wasn't as big of a to-do as Ailey's mostly because, well, she's 2.  She likes baby dolls and pretty much anything her siblings are playing with that she can't have at the moment. ;)  The next 2 years will involve her interests more and she'll be involved in the planning.  I'm really looking forward to that!  I still decorated just for her and she got cupcakes.  I've seen that she's more into cookies than cake, so we may be going with a cookie cake next year. ;)

The paper lantern balls in the pics are from Michael's and I got a great price for them!  I love it when I can use one of their 40% off 1 item coupled with 25% of entire purchase coupons!  Woohoo!  Hopefully, they will last for many years to come...especially if I can keep the girls from playing with them like they are actual bouncy balls!  Oy.

Okay, brea got a chocolate chip pancake breakfast.  She was funny because she didn't really know what was going on, though she did a good job waiting to blow out her candles on the pancakes and cupcakes later on while we sang happy birthday to her.

Ailey had help blowing out her candles on her cake, so she decided that Brea needed her help blowing out her candles on the cupcakes.  I think Brea will like blowing out her own candles next year. ;)

When it came time to open her presents, I started her out, but she soon got the hang of it herself and was excited about her hello kitty doll and her vtech phone.  She is a phone fanatic!  She wouldn't stop swiping mine and Sam's phones, so we figured she needed her own. :)  The funny thing was that the other kiddos wanted to play with her phone so much!  We have a standing rule that presents don't have to be shared on the day they are received so that the person gets to actually play with their gifts.  The gifts usually end up getting shared all around after about 30 minutes, anyway.

All in all, we had a good day celebrating Brea. :)

Precious Brea-oo,

You are such a delight!  We are excited to see what God has built into you as you grow and blossom.  We are so proud of our beautiful, lovely, wonderful baby girl!  We love you sooooo much!  Happy Birthday!

Love,

Mommy and Daddy

Happy Birthday, Lerloo!

Today our Ailey turned 4!  She's really 4...WOW!  Four whole years...some days she seems ageless and other days I think that surely she can't be as old as she is.

I've started a habit that might turn into tradition of every other year going all out and inviting kiddos and doing the huge birthday party thing.  We did that last year, but I didn't want to be all ho-hum about it on the off years either.  I want the kids to feel very special and focused-upon on their birthdays.  I make a special birthday breakfast for each of them (they get to choose what they want to have) and i put candles in it and they get to blow them out.  This year I'm adding in decorations.  I was thinking about how when we have parties, I usually go all out with the decorations because people are coming over and all that jazz.  There is always an element of impressing there when decorating, but mostly I want to make the atmosphere really fun to be in.  It dawned on me that I should do that for the kids whether we have people coming over or not, just because I think they are special and I want them to feel it the whole day on their birthday.

Ailey is now at that age that she really gets the birthday thing and she was able to be pretty involved in the planning.  She is REALLY into Hello Kitty right now, so I asked if she would like a Hello Kitty birthday and the answer was a resounding YES!  I put time and effort into making the decorations so that I could reuse them again for Brea's birthday and for many to come in the future.  Ailey is pretty interesting.  She definitely has her own sense of style.  She likes pink and purple and shiny and all that, but she's rather specific with it all.  She like a little edginess to it.  So, I thought zebra and polkadots with black and pink would work just fine for her. :)

After it was all said and done, she really loved all of it, especially the marked attention from us!

Dear sweet Lerloo,

We love you so, so much.  You are a bright spot in our lives and your flame gets brighter with each passing day!  You are a joy, a challenge and a ton of fun all rolled into a small, energetic package.  God knew we needed you and we are so grateful to be molded into the parents that you need to grow and become everything you possibly will.  You are lovely, beautiful, smart, fun, talented, amazing, wonderful, incredible and fantastic!  We are so proud of you!

Love,

Mommy and Daddy

Angry Birds Birthday Party for the Boys!

The boys had a terrific birthday party.  We had such a good time fellowshipping with good friends and new friends!  Thank you Christina for the boys' cakes!  They were awesome, super yummy and very much admired! ~ Christina's Cakes by Design ~ Sam grilled hot dogs and they were super yummy, too!  We made little pom pom angry birds and pigs and then there was a flurry of activity involving the opening of presents and then the whacking of a pig pinata and then a slip and slide and my version of the Angry Birds game involving wipey boxes and crocheted Angry Birds a la my friend Reina. :)  I took a ton of pics and my friend Ali of AliRae photography thoughtfully brought her camera along and got a ton of pics, too.  I'm posting them all.  Just warnin' ya! ;)

Her are ones from MsAliRae:

 Yay!  I'm in a picture!