Birthday Weekend Extravaganza

The beginning of October is always a busy weekend with 5 family birthdays within a week of one another. Hailey turned 2 on Sept 30th, Aubree turned 9 and Jared turned 18 on Oct 1st (yes they share a birthday), Sara's birthday is Oct 5th and Preston turns 4 on October 6th. So it always gives us an excuse to get together and celebrate. Why not?

Jared wanted to go on a motorcycle ride so all the boys went Saturday. They go up near Ellensburg in the mountains. Carter went with them and said they rode near cliffs and went so high it was freezing cold. Aubree wanted an American Girl doll party. Jeni was going to surprise her and take her over to the new American Girl Store in Seattle near me, but Aubree wanted to stay at Grandma's and do a party with cousins. So Jeni made her own American Girl Bistro at my mom's with a menu and everything. They also made headbands and bracelets for their dolls, made paper dolls from my Mom's cricut, watched an AG movie and ate lunch at the AG Bistro of course.

The girls all had matching hair, a braid with a pony tail. Even Aubree's cousin Keyara had her hair in a braid when they went to go pick her up and that was pure coincidence!

At the American Girl Bistro. They had a menu to choose from and most of them chose Macaroni and Cheese wit Lots of Cheese (that's really what the menu says!) for their main course. They also ate club sandwiches, ceaser salad, pretzel bites with cheese, fruit kabobs, italian soda and fruit punch.

Jared had several friends over after the Priesthood session. My Mom made a bunch of his favorite foods. They sound gross all together, but they were good. Bread sticks with alfredo dipping sauce, nacho cheese and chips, layered bean dip, chocolate surprise cupcakes and kalotches (little smokies wrapped in roll dough and baked- yum). The guys even went swimming in the pitch black night! Jared is an amazing kid. He is cute, funny and such a good uncle. We talk about him leaving for his mission and Kate says she will miss him because he plays with her. We went to his football game on Friday night against Royal City. They lost big time, but what was interesting and sad is that Royal was winning by a ton and they were the one's getting personal fouls for unsportsmanlike conduct! And they were winning! We still had fun cheering Jared on. It was Royal's homecoming so they did a firework show during halftime which was awesome.

Sunday we watched General Conference, visited Merle and Delayne (my parent's neighbors who know everything that goes on, they would make good spies) because they wanted to see the kids, ate a yummy dinner with both sets of grandparents (they came after the first session), watched the second session then headed to Tri-Cities so Melanie could take our family pictures. We haven't had family pictures for 3 years. Kyle hates getting pictures, he's worse than the kids, but I have to give him credit because he was actually good...I had the first meltdown when Preston wouldn't stand still and look at the camera...and we had just started! Let's just say we are glad they are over with. ;)