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!

A Happy Fourth

One of my favorite holidays has come upon us, and we celebrated it well.

Of course, we did have to make up for it being canceled last year while we were in Texas because of the drought there.

It was no Nebraska (that state rocks the 4th so hard!) but there was fun that was had this year.

Starting with this happy girl preparing the patriotic cupcakes...

And then a slip-n-slide filled lunch time barbecue at a friends' home...

And then swimming and more barbecuing at our house...

And Independence day crown-making...

And lots of swimming under the hot sun...

And just relaxing while we waited for the sun to go down...

And finally it was time for fireworks in our driveway...

throwing snappers on the ground

Anna preferred to watch from a distance

They named this guy "Dead Joe" and set him up in front of the lit fireworks.  Boys...

Yes, a shirt on this guy would have been a good idea.

And we ended our evening down at our neighborhood beach and watched the Navarre Beach fireworks show from there.  

Okay, so I don't know how to take pictures of fireworks successfully.

There, that's better.

(And to keep it real...it wasn't quite as great as I thought it would be...we were not as close as I had hoped, and we unknowingly set up our chairs next to a smoking family, and had to skooch a bit which, in the dark, wasn't the easiest thing to do.  There was also some complaining coming from a few of our children as the fireworks started about 20 minutes late so it wasn't the most pleasant fireworks watching we've had.)

Happy Fourth of July!  And thank you to all who defend our freedoms!