Birthday Celebrations

This past Friday was Peanut's 5th birthday and boy is she excited to be a whole hand!!! We spent months with her talking about it and now it's all about being a big girl because she is a whole hand old now.

The birthday song emberasses her.

There was deffinately a theme this year, and if you know Peanut personally then you've probably already guessed that it was Strawberry Shortcake.

 When Noni came by on Wednesday she brought Peanut her LeapPad Ultra (which is an awesome educational and fun device) and the much wanted Sweet Dreams replacement movie!

And ECJ was given Noni's old lap top for use for educational purposes. YCJ received Noni's old notebook for the same reasons. Both were extatic.



Then on Friday Peanut got a homemade strawberry cake with chocolate/strawberry frosting and strawberry slices inside. As well as a few gifts from us, including a learning game for the computer and an old fashioned doll.

She got a few other small things that night but it was a pretty relaxed birthday and the doll was the hit of the day.

Near sunset the sky turned pink on her birthday which made her so happy.

And this afternoon (Sunday) the "J" boys and "Aunt J" came over for a little party. The kids love when they get to all hang out together! 

Peanut mixing up the cupcake batter.

Strawberry Shortcake pictures we colored for the day.

Pink table cloth a must!

The cupcake cake.

Of course there were gifts and the eating of cake and icecream!

Peanut and Cracker Jacks and the "J" boys enjoying the birthday.

Amazingly enough with four boys and two girls from about age 13 to age 5 we only ended up with one minor injury due to goofing around.

Bloody nose.

And sometime within the next couple of weeks we'll celebrate again with the rest of the family. That is four celebrations for one birthday for one little girl. It does seem like a lot but it is par for the course for our family. Noni works midnights at a hospital as a critical care and intensive care nurse and usually can't make it out on the actual birthday or for a scheduled party and so she usually comes out for a day with the kiddos. We always do something little and simple on the actual birthday where the kids pick what is for dinner and they get gifts from us. And finally there is usually one or two parties for the rest of the family and friends. Four is a lot of times to celebrate one birthday but there was one year where ECJ had 6 celebrations over as many weeks!! It is one of the few ways we've managed to handle a large family with different schedules and each of our friends having different schedules as well and for us it works!