A Three Day Celebration!

August 2nd Alexa turned seven...but the celebration began July 31st with a Rock Star birthday party!

The guests arrived at 2pm and created personalized guitars and guitar pick necklaces before presenting their concert in the playroom-turned-stage. While we had several Kids Bop CDs, a Disney CD, and the Hannah Montana Movie soundtrack available, it was the Vacation Bible School CD that the kids belted out the loudest as shown in the video below!! Even Brody got into the act!







































The highlight of the party, however, was when she received a special delivery from her dad in the middle of the party!

She enjoyed all of her gifts and completed several of the crafty presents she'd been given that evening after the party. Though she chose to save her family gifts until the 2nd, she did open her present from us - horse pajamas with a horse card revealing that she would once again get to attend Horse Lover's Day Camp, which would begin on her birthday.

Sunday evening we headed to our favorite park for a picnic. There's just something whimsical about wooden playgrounds, something their plastic counterparts just can't match. After swinging and playing chase through the castle, we hit the corner ice cream shop for a cool dessert.









































Finally, Monday morning arrived. I woke Alexa up at 7:15 so she would have time to open her presents before heading to horse camp. That evening, we ate dinner at Max and Erma's, her favorite local restaurant, and then 'camped out' in the living room.

































































































I can't believe I have a seven year old and that she will begin 2nd grade in just over three weeks. How does the time go by so quickly?

August? Really?

It's August. And this blog has been severely ignored for the last four and a half months. It wasn't intentional...ok maybe it was at first....in April when Billy's R&R was over and he headed back to Kuwait, I definitely avoided the blog. I didn't even know where to begin with summarizing the incredible two weeks we'd had together, with documenting all of the family moments we'd squeezed in to 'make up' for the previous four months spent apart. It was too overwhelming and quite frankly too depressing to try to sift through the photos when the goodbye was still so fresh.

So April came and went without a blog update.

May brought a visit from my mom, then my mother in law, and then Brody's 4th birthday. I have some great photos from May...but how could I post those when I still hadn't successfully summarized the R&R visit?

So May came and went without a blog update.

The kids and I headed to Texas in June and spent a month visiting family and taking lots more photos and making many more memories. We returned home in July to jump right into VBS at our church, and then yesterday was Alexa's 7th birthday celebration - a 'star studded' event. Her actual birthday is tomorrow...which means its August. And football season kicks off soon. And school will start in three and a half weeks. And Billy will be home in just over 11 weeks (give or take a few days). And I am seriously behind on this blog. So its time to make a plan and tackle my procrastination. The goal is to put up one new post per day throughout this week in hopes that by Friday, I'll be 'caught up' with chronicling all of our activities from March until now. The posts probably won't be chronological, but at this point, something is better than nothing!! Hope you enjoy the few 'teaser' photos included with this post...check back at the end of the week for the full report!!