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Nine. Mosely’s turn.
It always happens to Mosely. It’s because her birthday is only a few days before Christmas. I never forget this cute girl’s birthday. Not ever. But I always underestimate the amount of effort and/or time it will take to pull a birthday event together. Wait – who am I kidding? I do this for every birthday in our house. I have it all planned in my mind. Gift ideas. Theme. Location. Guests. Odds and ends. But then – oh – then. The time always evaporates. Always. And then suddenly it’s two days before the birthday and the one gift I want to find is sold out and the place is booked…
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How To Celebrate Five With About That Many Dollars
1. Allow your daughter the rare (first in her lifetime actually) privilege of choosing three friends to invite over for an evening of fun. 2. Instruct the girls to all wear dress-up princess attire. 3. Have big sisters paint finger nails and toe nails, brush hair, apply sparkle lip gloss and show the girls their reflections in a handheld mirror. 4. Spread a cache of beads and girly-colored pipe cleaners on the table and create necklaces and bracelets galore. 5. Eat miniature snacks served in muffin tins. (Pizza bites. Baked mozzarella sticks. Broccoli and hummus. Apples with dip. Chocolate cupcakes with pink icing.) 6. Permit the princesses to run around…
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Five Year Old Finnian.
There’s no end to the posts I’ve written about my youngest daughter. But when it’s your birthday – you get another one! Piper Finnian Willow Lacey turned five. Five! Half a decade. Little year on top of little year on top of little year. She only remembers ever having lived in South Carolina. She has no recollection of sleeping in a crib at the foot of our bed for the first six months of her life. Of loading all of our possessions in a U-Haul and moving two states down to as far south as I ever hope to reside. In her memory, her life began at Look Up Lodge…
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nine. 9. number nine.
When you wake up as a nine-year-old and your name is London Elizabeth Scout this is what you do ….. You wake up to your special requests coming true. Fruity Pebbles and the Sunday comics in bed. (Yep. Fruity Pebbles. Gasp!) You are allowed to open your presents before your cake. (You should know that agreeing to this decision was strongly influenced by Daddy. Mommy prefers the long wait and the building up of anticipation.) Now you have your hiking backpack for our future adventures. You get to choose our day’s activity. A day at our local water park. (How convenient that the library gave away tickets for the water…
Keep Reading . . .
The Deal With Me & Low Cost Flights
here we go …
A Heart’s Home: Lost Valley Ranch
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if you were wondering . . .
Yes. We do have enough children to play our own birthday party games together. But sometimes we invite a pal over anyway.
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happy birthday son.
“What do you want to do on your birthday Otto?” “Hunt crickets.” Happy birthday three.
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Yesterday.
I couldn’t just talk about Hawkeye on one day only. The kid’s so cute, he deserves a day or two, right? We had a plan for his birthday – we really did. Bergen asked to go on a hike and we were only too happy to oblige such a simple and sweet request. However, the rain had other plans for us. And so did the strep throats that three of our chaps were sporting. Instead, we postponed the hike for Saturday and spent the day being a lot more flexible. At the breakfast table Bergen was served his breakfast of choice – waffles with homemade cream, topped off with one…
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april 18
Happy Birthday Bergen Hawkeye. Every morning when you wake up with your moppy blonde hair sitting directly over your keen blue eyes, I think to myself – I could not love you any more than I do right now. My heart is virtually bursting with affection for you. And then the day passes. And every night I tuck you into your bed, quilt underneath, quilt on top, shaggy hair still a rowdy mess, eyes still piercing blue, I think to myself – I love you even more tonight than I did this morning. You are amazing. Happy Birthday Seven!
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18.
I won’t bemoan what seems impossible. The passage of so much time for which I can barely account. It’s an endless theme. And I already wrote about it yesterday. (And probably a half dozen other yesterdays.) 18. Today marks eighteen years of a world with Riley. (That reality nearly makes me gasp.) I always feel a little extra robbed when I start talking about time and my oldest daughter. And when you don’t meet your own child until she is six years old – something does seem stolen. I know she wasn’t mine those first six years, I know. And I know without her first six years and all that…
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four. 4.
Tomorrow she turns four. She loves unicorns and princess and dresses and cuddling with her daddy. We love her knock knock jokes and the way she pronounces “ch” and her quick laughter and her many names. One. Two. Three. Four. Piper, we just could not love you more.
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8.
Is a birthday all about the presents? Is it all about the family meal? The one where you get to choose any of your favorites, regardless of the combination, and have them served to you on the special birthday plate? Of course not! A birthday is about celebrating the life of someone you love, someone you know, someone you are so glad was born on this earth and you get to go about your days hanging out. Even better – you get to be family. Forever. A birthday is entirely about celebrating that person. And this weekend we celebrated our brand-new-eight-year-old . . . London Eli Scout. There are not…
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birthday boy. otto fox wilder.
This weekend, we celebrated our adorable, exuberantly loud, youngest son’s second birthday. And his birthday present was the world’s (okay, maybe just the neighborhood’s) largest-ever sandbox. We’re talking six tons of sand, people. Six tons. Which means we were not only celebrating Fox turning two years old, but also celebrating the last day I will officially know what a sand-free home feels like. So if you are planning a visit to our home soon, bring play clothes. Because you are sure to get messy. ‘ Oh, little Wilde Fox, happy second birthday sweet man.
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Tuck In Time
Last night I tucked in a five-year-old. This morning I woke up a six-year-old. Happy Birthday Bergen Hawkeye Norton. You know, I love tucking this kid in. I love it about as much as I love the fact that he calls his back teeth his “boulders” and I just cannot bring myself to correct him yet. Last night he asked me to cuddle with him. (Like he requests every night of his young life thus far.) And I know and I know and I know that he won’t keep asking me for long. So I climb the ladder to his loft bed and I place my head beside his on…
