Birthdays Galore

FIVE BIRTHDAYS! These were all the boy's birthdays which had been missed during Mike's deployment. The celebration was well worth the wait and it was an added bonus to have the girls home too!!! I think Mike and I will forego our birthday celebrations from this time period.

I inadvertently began a new tradition on Mike's 45th birthday. The balloon bouqet tradition. Each birthday celebrant gets a helium bouqet with a balloon for each year of their life. SO....we had lots of balloons on Sunday.

The boys chose to eat at a local pizza spot - Double Dave's....Yummm.

Then we zipped home and began the gift giving extravaganza. We do spend twice as much on our budget for birthdays as we do for Christmas...and having five of them to do - well it really did look bigger than our Christmas' and was a bit overwhelming. Not sure quite how to handle the photos - the girls were here and the only others who would want to see ALL the photos are grandmothers. ::snort:: Here's a few. Each boy sat in the recliner, surrounded by his ballons and presents. He HAD to wear ye ole pig hat and was seranaded by one of our various versions of Happy Birthday (which always sounds nicer when Bre is home ::snort::).

Zander loved his rocket man....

Zander received two remote controllers and then a converter that will allow 4 to play at once on play station. We were SHOCKED when he opened the converter...he look puzzled for about 3 seconds and then said "Oh - so more controllers can work!" ::snort::

Nolan with a flying frisby from Bre

Jared was SHOCKED by a 2 gig ipod. He kept saying "whoa". He'd asked for a walkman he could run with and use while mowing yards. He also got the sport band and we welcomed him to the 21st century.

Jamin got a movie and lots of heavier hand held weights. Mike and Krista made a scavenger hunt for him to find the weights.

Josiah's main gift from us went together with his Christmas gift and was his ipod Nano. BUT the kids all went together and got him this FM thingy for the ipod for his NEW CAR...and he likes it.

Then we moved to the kitchen for Mike's terrific ice cream cake. This is the first time we'd tried it with homemade icecream and it worked well. We had one layer but lots of goodies on top and Mike had gotten some mint chocolate pieces in the midst of the ice cream layer too. Yumm!

Sticking Candles on with hardshell

What's So intimidating about THIS man? He's a softie, I tell you!

BLOW!

While eating cake we all realized that Krista's birthday is NEXT Sunday and Bre's is the Saturday after THAT....we should have done them too. Ah well.....