Birthdays! Birthdays!

Wohoo Birthdays! I love birthdays! We had some very fun times this month (sorry about the glare, we had a lot of sun that day and my camera doesn't do well with the sun :=).

Emma decided she wanted a red velvet cake from Costco. That's her favorite. We did her presents and cake in the morning, then we went to the park for a couple of hours since the weather was so beautiful. We have all been learning to play basketball and spent most of our time on the court there.

Then we went to lunch at our Burger King that has a play ground and hung out there until it was time to head out to the roller skating rink for their public skate from 3 - 5. She has been begging to go roller skating since Joelle got to go with the Youth. We had so much fun!!!! Though we had a camera for all of this, we never took a picture. We filmed a lot though and David is going to work on posting some of that.

It was HILARIOUS to watch Ben, Jake and Katie learn to skate. Katie was brave and thought she had it all figured out and didn't need help, though she totally did. Jake fell once and then spent of the rest of the time mostly sitting and eating cotton candy and popcorn or being EXTREMELY careful. Ben did a great job. He totally figured out the skating thing though he fell plenty of times. During the last song he fell hard on his head and wasn't sure how he felt about skating anymore (even though he was telling me it was the best birthday ever about 5 mins. before that). I wish we could have skipped that last song :=). He still says it was super fun and is ready to try again next time.
I can't believe she is 11 years old.





I love this picture. Jake spent a lot of time looking for the perfect present for her. He is a great gift giver. He settled on a beautiful ring that she loves. He love it because "it sparkles no matter where you walk with it :)". He loved shopping for her and I admit it was fun for me too.
This little guy turned 9 this year. CRAZY!! He is such a sweet, handsome little man. He decided he wanted to try Laser Tag for his birthday. He loves Nerf guns and couldn't wait to get a chance to shoot Dad with something that would keep track of it :). - As a side note, he has started falling in love with fancy cars too, which is really fun when we go out. He is always spotting the flashiest cars.
So after his morning cake of Krispy Kreme doughnuts and presents we were off to play Laser tag. It was AWESOME (albeit, very expensive)! We were the only ones there since it was the middle of a school day (the best perk of homeschooling). We played for an hour sneaking around and shooting each other in the dimly lit, foggy room. I don't think I have had that much fun since we went roller skating (wink, wink).

For anyone interested, Joelle had the top score followed closely by David. I came in second to last. Just above Katie who didn't even play in the second round. She just ran around with me. I guess that means I actually lost. How humiliating :).

We went to Burger King again for lunch and then came home and watched Narnia which he had gotten that day (we already had the last 2 movies, but had never bought the first - who knows why - Ben has been asking for it forever). It was a wonderfully fun couple of weeks.