My Second Born Son...

has gone from this

to this.

And the nine years in between have been oh so sweet.

First of all, after all that love I had for my first born, I couldn't even imagine how there could be room in my heart for another little one.  I always knew I wanted a lot of children though, and I knew that God made it so my heart would just grow bigger and fuller.  And it happened.  Just days into holding this little baby in my arms, it felt like he had always been in our family and there was no doubt that my heart had doubled in size and certainly had room enough for all the love I could give him.  

We celebrated his nine years of life and all the curiosity, humor, cuddles, smiles, and boyishness that has come with it.  He's the one that has my sense of humor, and it's fun to see it come out in all of his funny ways.

The morning of his birthday, we celebrated with our tradition of birthday donuts.  

And then we let him choose an activity for the day, and he wanted our friends to come over to swim.

When Daddy got home, we left for our favorite restaurant, The Crab Trap on Okaloosa Island.  We love that we can eat overlooking the beautiful emerald gulf, and then take the pails that kids meals come in and go play on the beach.  

And a walk down stairs from the Crab Trap takes us to San Gelato on the Beach and a giant family platter of gelato...so yummy.

 And he opened a few presents from our family when we got home.

And then his friend birthday party...so fun.  He chose a space theme, which we've done before and it was really fun then, so I knew that it'd be a good one to plan. 

Other than a small shipping worry (which worked in our favor) and rain that spotted the day, everything we easy and fun and didn't stress me out in the way I've let birthday parties stress me out in the past.

We came up with fun activities to do for all the boys...decorating origami space planes, painting planets, "Pin the Coma on the Comet", racing with moon rocks, assembling space shuttle party favor boxes, and going through zero gravity training (aka swimming).

We went out swimming (zero gravity training) when there was a break in the rain, but once it started up again, the boys were more than happy to play in it.

We had such a fun time at this party that was all for my fun nine year old!