Birthday Saturday

I don’t believe I’ve ever mentioned this on the blog; I know I talked about these people plenty of times over one the old blog. (Which by the way, if you so feel the need to get a look into the single gal life I lived then you can still check out everything on my old blog, Tulips & Aprons.)

Back to the story, so my mom’s side of the family…we’re extremely tight. Right now, there’s 24 of us. I say right now, because there’ll always be babies added to the family thanks to all the cousins growing up and getting married and starting families. But for now, 24. Sounds like a lot, yeah? But compared to my dad’s side of the family…it’s small. When my dad’s side gets together, there’s almost 60 us. SIXTY. I love my dad’s side of the family, but with so many people it’s just hard to have the really close relationships like you’re able to have in smaller setting.

Back to the story….again…. so my mom’s side of the family is close! My cousins and I spent our Summers at our grandparents house and weekends at each other’s houses. We still get together as much as we can, whether we have a declared purpose for said gathering or not.

We celebrate several family birthdays in the Summer; so this year it was decided we would combine three of the little kids’ parties into one HUGE bash complete with three cakes, a bouncy house and fireworks! And then, this brings us to what was known as Saturday.

On Saturday we celebrated (these are all my little cousins) Sammy’s 12^th Birthday, Lorelei’s 5^th Birthday & Arabelle’s 1^st Birthday…naturally, her FIRST birthday somewhat outshined the others a tad for this particular day. I kinda went trigger happy with the camera pointed at her most of the day but she was just too sweet. It’s like she knew all the hoopla was for her and that she had a cute outfit on. Girlfriend rocked her first party!

Sarah (my cousin, Arabelle’s mom) ordered the cutest outfit on Etsy for her special day.

Can we just for a moment, stop and just stare in awe and wonder of how it’s already been a whole year since this little muffin joined our crazy! HOW in the world?!

It’s worth noting that Arabelle’s Daddy, Robert, is somewhat of a fireworks master. He anxiously awaits the 4^th of July every year so he can put on his show. This year, he held out until Arabelle’s party weekend to fire everything off.

After we stuffed our faces with a smorgasbord of a dinner, it was time to dive into those birthdays cakes! But not before the kiddos each blew out their candles.

Arabelle got serious about her cake…and got serious fast. She knew what she doing!

Then all three kiddos opened presents and I must admit we all felt like it  was Christmas morning at Ma & Pa’s house since there was no order to the gifts…only piles and one lonely soul trying to figure out which present went to which kid. “This one’s for Lorelei…here pass it to her….this one…..has no name…..WHO BROUGHT THIS PINK AND GREEN BAG??” I didn’t take a pic during this chaos. Just imagine wrapping paper flying everywhere, a one year old desperately trying to play with the empty boxes, a 12 year old boy furiously trying to get this new wrestling ring out its box and a 5 year old girl daintily walking around thanking each individual person for their gift.

As hot as it was Saturday, all the littles spent most of their time outside at the bounce house. Little Miss held her own for a few trips.

Meanwhile, back inside, Stephen & my uncle Stan whipped up Arabelle’s new Princess Cozy Coupe faster than anyone I’ve ever seen.

And when it was finally dark enough, it was time to head outside for Robert’s Fireworks Extravaganza….which always begins with harmless sparklers and kid-friendly fireworks….

And then…..it’s time for the show! (Fireworks are hard to photograph…just know that he does a really good job putting fireworks together so that when the first one goes off, all the others smoothly follow suit on their own thanks to his careful wiring…or whatever he does.)

That, my friends, was Birthday Saturday!! We sure do love celebrating our family!!