Three Birthdays

On Monday evening, we celebrated Erik's 33rd birthday.  While dinner was being cooked on the grill, we had the chaser.

Searching, searching everywhere!

Finally time to open the presents! :)

I had to get a picture of Erik wearing the chef's hat my parents sent him as part of his birthday present.  My mom embroidered "grill master" on it, cute! :)

Erik's pick for dinner: pasta salad, green salad (pretty sure I interjected that one!), cherries, and grilled steaks.

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Will you take a look at this beaut of a cake??  This is what happens when you can't make your cake until 4:00 in the afternoon, thus not letting your cake cool enough before you put the ice cream in between the layers- yikes!  It started to fall apart real fast as I was assembling it, so I just stopped what I was doing stuck it in the freezer and voila, here it is!  At least it was delicious!

Blow 'em out baby!  I hope Erik had a fun time celebrating.  His actual birthday was on Saturday while we were at the renioun.  I told him that I want to tell people it was his birthday there, so people could sing to him.  As soon as I said that he immediately gave me a serious look and said, "You. Will. Not. Tell. Anyone"  Okay then! :) 

Erik should be proud of the 33 year old that he is though.  He is an awesome father and husband.  A super hard worker and my best friend.

On Tuesday night, we celebrated our second birthday of the week by going to the Stakers house for Camry's fourth birthday.  Brittany gave the kids really cute treat bags with Fourth of July accessories and candy.  Do you see the boys in awe of that barbie cake? haha, they had never seeing anything like it!  (It was super cute!)

Our third birthday was celebrated on Wednesday . . . our nation's birthday!  Fourth of July is one of my favorite holidays.  It smack dab in the middle of summer fun, gives us a reason to be together as a family (no work, yahoo!), and give me a chance to pause and remember what a lucky girl I am to live in the United States.  Gotta love that Red, White, and Blue!

We started the morning with the Liberty run.  I entered myself, Jackson, and Wyatt into the different races.  Look at how cute Wyatt looks with his first racing bib on! :)

My run went OK.  Like an idiot I ate two granola bars on the way to the race, because I was feeling hungry.  But two granola bars right before a race?  Not the brightest idea! I started to get really painful stomach cramps 2/3 of the way in haha.  It was till a lot of fun though.

Jackson's mile race was next.  

Getting ready . . . .

 . . . .and they're off!

Jackson did such an awesome job. Even in this heat, he improved his mile time from the Apple blossom race by like 4 minutes!

I loved to see how proud he was of himself!

And last but not least was the adorable 100 yard dash for the 3-5 year olds.  Wyatt was really getting into the warm ups.

Waiting for the flag

Ah, they were all so cute!

Wyatt wanted me to run it with him.  I couldn't remember what the length of his race was, so after 100 yards (which is very short!) and we were done, I think both Wyatt and I were a little surprised.

haha "is it over?"

Wyatt even got a ribbon!  Go Wyatt!!

Late that morning, I canned my first few jars of pickles!  (this picture was taken a few days prior).  So far I've made 3 jars of bread and butter and 3 jars of dill.

The rest of the day was spent pool side- it was a good, hot day for it too!

I can't remember the last time I was able to just lay in the sun on a towel with a nice, cold drink (hard to do when you're chasing little ones around), however, it brought back nice memories seeing Wyatt do it! :)

 

Of course, I had to get a family picture!

While we were taking pictures in the front, our neighbor Sydney said, "Oh you know what picture you would love? A picture with me and Jackson, Wyatt, and Anna!" 

Erik and I kept debating if we wanted to go see a show or do fireworks at home.  Jackson was the deciding vote, and wanted to do fireworks at home. So we started Hugo in the basement while we waited for it get dark.  Not surprisingly, Wyatt fell asleep.

Sadly we weren't even able to light up fireworks because a big thunderstorm rolled in!

As you can see Jackson was so disappointed! (Is it mean of me that I took a picture of him crying? I had the camera out and ready for the fireworks show, so I took a snap).

 After much coaxing, we ended up having a fun time watching the lightning show on the back porch . . . chocolate always helps too.

So for the third night in a row, we let the boys stay up late on Thursday and we finally set off our fireworks.  Yeah!!!

After all of these birthday celebrations, this week is going to seem really boring!!