March Madness

When I refer to March Madness I'm not talking about basketball.  Despite my love of the sport, I have never filled out a bracket.  I think I have watched a few of the games over the years, it's just not something that has found it's way into my cable-less life.  No, the madness I'm talking about is the birthday fun we have at our house!  ELSA:  You already saw Elsa's cake.  Well, I can't say that all the festivities lived up to the splendor of the cake, but we had a good time.  There was a little impromptu party on a day that i was babysitting.  Then, her birthday was on a Sunday.  She opened her presents and we had her birthday dinner.  This is what I loved.  What did she want?  Hot dogs.  With buns.  I guess that was the special part.  Hot dug buns.  An admitted rarity around here.

   I was excited because a few weeks before her birthday I had stumbled upon the information that Disney on Ice was going to be in our nearest city!  We bought tickets for her and I kinda on a whim.  When she opened her present that had the tickets in it we had the promo video queued to play so she could see what we would go watch.    That weekend she and I headed out right after school and made it just on time to the show.  It was truly magical!  I loved it and she did too!  She wanted to tell everyone about it for days.  We did a little shopping the next day and then headed home.  We stayed the night at a college friend's house.  It's fun to have a friend from the good ol' Ricks days so close.  Elsa LOVED playing with the dogs.  I think she almost like that as much as Disney on ice.  Plus, no siblings to compete with. 

GIBSON: He was a lucky man this year. He got to celebrate his birthday with Grandma Debbie and Papa Reed. We had planned in January to take a "birthday weekend" to the city. Reed and Debbie met us there and we filled the weekend full of fun. We stayed at a hotel with a (cold) swimming pool, short tip to the zoo, ate a HuHot (Mongolian Grill bonanza) went to Build a Bear (the kids had been saving up for this-and good thing too), Chris and I made it to the temple, played at the park, other random shopping, and most importantly (for me) ice cream cake from Dairy Queen!!
So after all that, Gibson still had his birthday day to look forward to.

 He was happy and excited to take no bake cookies to share with his primary class.  His birthday dinner request was green crepes.  We ended up with just crepes with blueberries, peaches, strawberries and cream.  Oh yeah, he REALLY wanted watermelon.  We actually picked up some surprisingly delicious watermelon in the city and enjoyed it all birthday day.  He loved his many presents, and I was excited for his basketball hoop.  we found a used one for a friend and had another friend drill some new holes so we could put it down to 6'--a much more successful height for him.  He has already spent hours out in the driveway.  The weather was gorgeous on his birthday and we spent a lot of the day outside in the sunshine sitting and playing. 

ME:  Well, I'm older now.  My birthday was happy and nice.  The kids were cute.  I pushed the younger two and "ran" my errands (around 3 miles) to prove to myself that I MUST be young if I can push two kids and jog 3 miles.  Right?!?  Chris took me out to dinner.  Yummy and relaxing.  We rode our bikes to the restaurant.  I think I was determined to prove to myself that I am still young and energetic!  It was a nice weather, sunshiny day!  No complaints!  Plus, I enjoyed my childrens' presents so much this year! 

Now, I'm sure there are many more noteworthy things that should make it into this post, but alas, I am too tired to continue.
I also realized that we had Reed and Debbie take a bunch of photos when they were here and we didn't get the pictures off of their card.  I will have to post more photos when I get them.