Happy Mother's Day, Father's Day and Birthday To Me!

We've been celebrating it up with all the birthdays and other special days these past couple of months.

First of all, I guess I never posted about Mother's Day. It was a nice day. The kids and Josh came in and woke me up singing "Happy Mother's Day" to the tune of "Happy Birthday to You" and bearing the precious gifts they had made. Maddie made me this HUGE flower in school and also made me a card.

Ryley made me this picture of flowers with hand written notes on it. 

Daddy got me a gift certificate for a pedicure. Thanks honey!  My mom was out of town visiting Caitlin in California so there wasn't any celebrating with her, but we did get to spend the whole evening with Josh's mom and family so that was fun. We're so thankful to have both of our mom's here with us. They are wonderful and amazing ladies and we're so thankful for all they have taught us and continue to teach us and our children.

Next up was Father's Day. We kicked it off with another rousing rendition of "Happy Father's Day To You" sung to, yup - you guessed it, "Happy Birthday To You." We're obviously very creative in this family! Ha ha ha ha. After that we showered him with all our gifts. Ryley and Maddie had both made some Father's Day presents at school before it got out. Maddie made him this cool guitar and also made him a special note.

Ryley made him this cute picture with some more handwritten things. I love these kind of presents! The things they write about when they're this little are so precious and cute!

I also enlisted the help of the kiddos to make Josh's present:

I took this picture of them and framed it for him. 
I was also going to have them help me in making his other present too but it turned out too small for them to do much.

They did help me pick out the fabric and each got to pick a button to stick on it.  Maddie picked out a multicolored button that looked like a guitar pick, Ryley picked out a very colorful fish, and Cash picked out a teddy bear.  I used some leftover letters from making soccer uniforms a few seasons ago to put on the "Dad"  - nice touch, eh?  I got the pattern from here and made this whole thing from scratch!  This is a SERIOUSLY amazing accomplishment for me because I am the world's worst sew-er (seamstress maybe?) and this was waaaaaaaaaay more complicated than I thought it would be plus it was mostly hand-sewing. I'm amazed that it ended up being wearable at all. I did end up being really, really short on my giant man-sized husband so that was pretty funny. The little piece that sits underneath the tie and is usually almost as long as the top part was all the way up at like his second button and was maybe 2 inches long. I couldn't really measure him though before I made the tie and let's face it. I wouldn't have known how to alter the pattern anyway!

We (the kids and I) also made some presents for Granny and Pops and Grandma and Grandpa for Father's Day and very belated Mother's Day presents.

We went over to Granny and Pops house after church and ate dinner with them and celebrated then headed over to Grandma and Grandpa's to celebrate with them for a little bit too. It's nice to have everyone so close but it makes for very long holidays. : )  We have such great Dads and love them both so much!

On Father's Day since there weren't any meetings before or after church for Josh (YAY!!!!) we managed to get everyone ready early and had some extra time to take a family photo. 

We had to get a few silly ones in there too and this is my personal favorite - angry faces:

Check out Maddie!  She looks possessed or something.  Ryley looks like he's about to enter the ring in a WWF smackdown or something.  Josh actually looks scary.  Cash just looks really afraid of all these crazy people.  I managed to just look crazy.  Nice, Jeni.

The week after Father's Day was my birthday.  Thanks to everyone who called to wish me happy birthday or send little presents.  I appreciate all the thoughts!  Maddie also made me another card.  She is quite the little artist.  Check out the cut-outs in the middle of it.  How creative is she?!

Unfortunately, my birthday fell on a Sunday this year.  BOOOOOORING.  I did enjoy being awakened by another rendition of "Happy Birthday To You" sung by my family.  Josh did take me out to dinner and a movie on Saturday though.  We went to The Cheesecake Factory to use our Christmas present gift card from Dave and Caitlin and I got the HUGEST salad known to mankind.  Holy cow it was big but it was really good.  I, of course, couldn't eat it all - it's just not humanly possible!  I did manage to squeeze in a little cheesecake somehow though.  It was probably the best dessert I have EVER had.  Coconut, chocolate, caramel, cheesecake, whipped cream, mmmmmmmmm. 

After rolling me out the door of the restaurant he took me to see "The Proposal."  It was a really cute movie.  Very predictable but very cute and funny.  It had a few "racy" scenes but they were actually the funniest parts of the movie and quite hilarious. 

So that's what's been going on around here.  The party's will continue throughout the next couple of months with all the birthdays coming up - especially Eva and Maddie's 8th birthdays, which means baptisms too.  I can't believe they're almost old enough.  It seems like such a short time ago that Elisa and I both had these brand new little babies and were wondering when they'd walk or start talking.  It sure goes by quickly!  We don't know for sure when Maddie's baptism will be but we'll keep everyone posted.  Hope you're all having a great summer too!