Ruby's surprise party!

Some of you may know that my husband David recently spent some time in the hospital. Eleven nights total, to be exact. He had to have surgery for crohn's disease related issues. 

Well it happened to fall right on Ruby's birthday, which was a bummer. Ruby and I had been planning to do a fun "salon" type party, but I told her we'd have to postpone it. She was such a sweetheart and even said 'well maybe next year.' Like I was going to put it off that long!

I had a few friends who caught wind of this and offered to help in any way. So, long story short ... all my amazing friends stepped in and put the entire party together! I hardly did a thing, besides coordinate the timing and who was doing what. One friend brought decorations, another brought goody bags (with homemade lip gloss and bath salts!), another friend brought all the things for hair, makeup, and pedicures! (she owns a salon). My cousin brought the cake! Grandma helped set up everything and put the food together. Several other friends came to help with hair and nails. 

I am just floored by the goodness of my friends and so very thankful. I know Ruby felt so special. She was WAY surprised and these photos give you a glimpse at how awesome it was. 

We had it at the church and I tricked her by saying we needed to rush over for a meeting I forgot about (on a Friday evening - ha!) She was SO unsuspecting, it was perfect. 

Thanks again, dear friends, for all your help in making this a special birthday for sweet Ruby!

Get ready for a ton of photos now...

Ruby turned SEVEN!

I can't believe my sweet little Ruby is seven years old. She is such a bright spot in our family. We started the day with breakfast in bed. She was kind enough to share with her brothers and sister. You can see that Simon and Greta stole donuts.

Then she put on her new birthday shirt and headed to school. I was always jealous, with an August birthday, of kids who had birthdays during the school year - I don't know why! Later that day i took balloons and donuts to her class. I think she liked the special attention. 

 When she got home from school, I was most excited to let her open her "big" present ... her rainbow quilt! She knew I had been working on it and had seen the quilt top, but didn't know that I had finished it. She was SO surprised and loved it a lot. Yay! ((I plan on taking better pictures of it and making a separate blog post. If you follow me on instagram, you've seen #rubysrainbowquilt.))

Happy 7th Birthday Ruby!

It's gr8 to be Eight!

Max turned 8 last week! 

I can't believe it. That means we've been parents for eight years. Wow. What a sweet boy Max is. He gets excited about everything and is so easy-going. It's a good thing because I'm sure we make a lot of parenting mistakes on him since he's our oldest. 

We decided to have a "L8 Night" party, and of course it started at 8pm! It was perfect and we avoided the heat of the summer and could actually enjoy being outside. We played some relay games and ran around outside for awhile. Then went inside for presents and cake. After that we busted out the sparklers and the glowsticks. Simple pleasures, but the kids loved it. 
I think just being out late at night was exciting for most of them. 

We were also lucky to have cousins Naomi and Ezra visiting from Georgia! 
Lucky timing!In the photo above he's opening his special gift from Grandma Packham ... new scriptures!

Max requested the 8 cake, similar to Simon's 3 cake. Just made two chocolate bundt cakes - so simple.

Construction paper banner of Eights ... decorations on a tight budget! And pay no attention to my temporary polkadot curtain (sheet). Still working on details in the new house.

 Can you believe we fit 17 kids on our couch!?

Next time I'm skipping everything else and just going straight to the glow sticks and sparklers! Cheap and fun entertainment. 

Happy 8th Birthday to our favorite biggest brother! We are so lucky to have Max at the top of our crew.


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