Triple Birthday with photos

It's *someone's* birthday!

one of many pizzas!

The banner is up!

~The birthday kids~

Had fun trashing the entire kitchen making pizzas for 9

watching funny Youtube videos

The birthday girls favorite, Carvel ice cream cake

On January 11th, my eldest daughter drove up for an 12 day visit.  We have had SUCH fun!!  It's been so wonderful having here home to be with during the days, watching movies at night, making homemade pizzas way too many times.  How could I say no?

On the 16th we celebrated her and Danny's dual birthday, like usual.  She didn't want to have hers alone, and since she was on winter break, we made sure our tradition carried on, and we added her boyfriend, Tyler to the mix also.  His birthday is on the 26th, and he goes to school in Rochester, so he will not have his family or long time friends around.  He expressed being sad about that we turned our double birthday into a triple.  Nothing fancy, just some homemade pizza for 9, followed by a Carvel ice cream cake and funny Youtube videos like Brian Reagan, comedian, and Marcel the seashell with shoes on, oh and Baby Monkey riding backward on a pig (that was strange).

I don't know what I'll do when Sunday comes and she'll have to leave in order to begin the new semester.

16 Candles

This weekend we celebrated Felicia's 16th birthday.  Hard to believe as it seems Autumn just turned 16 a few months ago, yet in reality she will be 19 in two months.  Two of her new friends came to share the day with her, and we made our own personal size pizzas for the activity.  There were Hawaiian pizzas made, pepperoni, and the works with mushrooms, onions, peppers and pepperoni.  It was fun.  

Afterward Felicia opened her presents.  Her friend Bianca drew her a sketch and gave her a blockbuster gift card, and he friend Christina gave her a movie which she really liked and we watched later that night.  

Carvel ice cream cake topped off the celebration and boy was it good!  I even managed to stay within my points range on Weight Watchers with a little pre-planning.  WOOT!  

The girls walked Bianca home, then when they came back they watched a scary movie in their room.  What a fun night.  Here are some pictures:

Aiden rolling out his pizza dough

 Ryan's turn

 Felicia and her friends trying to get the dough to stop sticking!!

 The finished product

 Danny creating his dinner

 Happy diner ;0)

 Here comes the cake!

 ~16 candles~

Friends that make a birthday more special

Birthday Times

Today was Mike's 36th birthday. We took a drive to his office early this morning. I know what an exciting way to celebrate a birthday, huh?!! While there with all the boys, I noticed the horrifying shape their two spider plants were in. They had about 100 babies on them between the two, and I am NOT exaggerating, I wish I was. Tips were brown, lots of yellow, really appalling! I took them down, removed the dead leaves, clipped the ends at an angle with scissors, and removed all babies but one. I mixed up some plant food that was available with water and fed them. I took these babies all home in a box. It is an outlandish amount I have here. I need to find a container big enough to allow them to fit into while keeping the ends in water until they root. I only have 5 pots to put them in, so I will have to work on accumulating some more. At this rate, we can have both our porches lined with these things once they take root and can be planted!! I actually made the mistake of potting about 35 or so of them in 5 pots, only to get a twinge of a vague memory of having to root them first in water. After looking it up on the net, LOVE the net! I now need to remove them and do it right. ;-) Maybe now I can save more because I still have a box FULL even after the 35 were potted.

Anyhoo, it is So stormy here today. On our drive this morning, the lake was unusually violent! The waves were strong and coming fast. The waves were crashing against the walls spraying up to the road in a couple spots. I was pretty impressed because there is a beach down there, so for it to get to the wall like that, wow, the strength was something to see! There is a lake shore flood warning in effect as well as wind warnings. Boy is it whirling around out there causing a ruckus.

This afternoon I made our usual birthday chocolate fudge cake with my daughter, Felicia. We ordered the area's famous steak and cheese pizza. It's so unique and yummy, the obvious, steak and cheese! but also jalapenos and I'm not sure what kind of cheese but I want to say and asiago?? A real winner! We also ordered a cheese pizza for the kids, and some hot buffalo wings. You just can't get boneless around here like we used to get from Quicky's in Chicopee, but it'll do. ;-) We also have some adesso wine for later with some dark chocolate. Here are a couple photos from the day.



Happy Birthday honey, and a prayer for MANY more!! I thank God everyday for your love and kindness, good nature and generosity. For loving me even when I don't deserve it. Loving our children the way that you do.



Felicia was not yet up in the morning when we took this shot, I'll have to take one of her and daddy later when we have the cake...

~Harvest Birthdays~

This weekend we celebrated Aiden's 5th and Felicia's 15th birthdays. We planned a Harvest themed birthday party. We had baked ziti, kielbasa with peppers, onions and Barbecue sauce, buttered garlic ziti for the picky bunch, garlic bread, cheese pizza along with pepperoni pizza, a variety of chips and sodas, as well as 100% juice. Ooh, let's not forget my caramel apples!


Ryan ended up sick with a fever the day of the party, so 17 people that were supposed to join us did not come for not wanting to get sick themselves. We decided to go ahead and celebrate anyhow since we already had all the food and it would not last for next weekend. Incidentally, after the Tylenol kicked in, Ryan wanted to join in. Today he is totally back to himself, so whatever he had was fast moving thankfully!!

The first order of business after eating lunch was apple bobbing. Boy was this a F-U-N activity! We had a barrel of laughs as each took his or her turn. Even though it was just us, my daughter's friend, my eldest daughter's friend, a neighbor, and Mike's brother's family there was still enough of us for a fun time.






Next up was cider donut eating from a string. No hands allowed!!! We secured a rope going from one end of the swing set to the other, clothesline style. Then we hung the donuts with ribbons from the rope. All the children lined up and had a rip roaring hilarious time trying to eat these without the aid of their hands.






We ended up letting Aiden and Felicia open their gifts on the patio and kind of rushed that part along since it became very dark cloudy and a few drops began to fall sporadically.


We then ushered everyone inside for cake. We got a great big cake, very unique and perfect for our harvest theme. It had a tree off to the side with all the pretty fall colored leaves. I added Brach's pumpkin creme candies along the bottom for a pumpkin patch look, and some candy indian corn (it has brown instead of yellow) along the side border. We sang the song, the candles were blown out and the cake and ice cream served up.



Surprisingly, as ominous as the weather looked, (and it did look weird, I even took a picture of it because the trees looked silver as the leaves were turned in the increasing wind, and the sky looked slate gray) it cleared up again very quickly and we headed back outside to play.

I had a quart mason jar filled with candy indian corn and Brach's candy pumpkins. Each guest was to take a guess at how many were in the jar, and the guesser that came closest without going over won. There were 190 candies in the jar, and uncle Justin won with his guess of 144.

Every child got to take a cone we made with scrapbook paper filled with goodies home, and also pick a pumpkin from our "patch" in the garden to take with him/her. What looked like a disaster to start with, ended up being a memorable fun birthday and my son didn't even know that anything was off. He had the best birthday, and my daughter had expressed the same. It made me thankful that they are easy to please, and can find pleasure in smaller scale things. What a blessing that was to me!