Our Birthday Boy!

This picture of the kids holding up their cards, was supposed to be at the bottom -oh well!

Why is Mary making me do this?!!

Daddy's birthday picture- before the kids went to school (excluding Case)

Joel reading Ashleigh's silly card!

Last Tuesday, August 4th was Joel's birthday. Tuesdays are the days that he takes the kids in the morning and I pick them up in the afternoon. Every other day it's the opposite. Anyways, I made sure that we all wished him a happy b-day before he went off to work and I made him stand by the door for his birthday picture. He probably felt like one of the kids and Mommy's making me do this! After I picked up Quinn and Mikaila at 2:45, we had 45 minutes to kill until Ashleigh got out, so I let the kids get wet in the fountain and eat some snacks. We had a little more time left and so we walked over to the little convenient Bashas store (literally quite small) to at least get a box cake mix and some frosting, I knew I wanted to do at least a little something special for him once he got home. It was a somewhat race against the clock to get home, make the cake-let it cool and of course make our homemade b-day cards for him. Dinner was nothing unusual, but the fish was actually quite tasty and of course, kids always like mac n cheese to go with it. Before school had started , I had bought some poster size paper and we all got out my old magazines and tried to be creative and cut things out that we thought would make a cute card. Since Casey and Camden like going to Micky D's aka "The hamburger store" I found a picture of a happy meal in one of the magazines and pasted that in the card and it just said, thank you for taking us Daddy! All the cards turned out nice, the kids hopefully had fun doing that and I know Joel when I say, that he appreciated a special and simple birthday with his family.

Joel's Mom had gotten Joel several things for his b-day, and the one thing was an outside activity set (badminton, horseshoes-things like that). Well, Camden asked over and over to set it up outside and we tried to tell him the usual, "it's too hot out honey!" Soooo, we decided to play it in our big kitchen area! We put a long string down the middle of our floor (and I counted out the tiles to make sure Joel didn't have more space than me!) We had an indoor tennis match with a sponge ball and two plastic racquets-it was the best!

Joel you are very special, & we will always love YOU!