Birthday Celebration #3

With her cousins in town, today was another celebration for Natalie's birthday. It wasn't all about her this time, however, since her older brothers had three soccer games between them today. We did start the morning with the usual Saturday breakfast of banana chocolate chip pancakes and turkey bacon. After breakfast, Natalie and her cousins decided that they wanted to play with Anthony. They were pretending that he was a vampire or monster or something and they were cutting him up with their play swords and knives. Eric jumped in on the action. They're all actually tickling him behind the knees in this picture--he's very ticklish behind his knees.

As you can see from the smile on Anthony's face, he was being such a good sport about this. He is SO good with kids. There aren't many "almost" 15-year-old boys who play with their 8-year-old sister and cousins and have fun with it. He usually only puts one earbud in his ear when he's listening to his iPod, and he did get upset once when they accidentally dislodged his earbud. As long as he was able to listen to the music, he let them do what they wanted. They mostly sat on his back while he was laying on the floor, so he could just lay there ignoring them.

Patrick was off with Alex for his 8:45AM game this morning. The rest of the adults wanted to go to the gym. This is probably the first time that my sister Melissa was the one prodding everyone to go to the gym. Natalie wasn't all that crazy about having to go to the Child Care Center at the gym, but at least she had her cousins to play with. My sisters and I took the cardiokickboxing fitness class while my brother-in-law lifted weights. After the gym we took the kids to Chick-Fil-A for lunch then home.

Melissa wanted to take Natalie shopping at the local family-owned toy store that we like to go to, called Toy Zone. Cynthis stayed home with Eric and her son Nick. Melissa and I took the three girls. Natalie didn't find anything there that she really liked, but her cousins ended up buying Silly Bandz there. We went next door to the Hallmark shop where Natalie picked out some stationery that had "N" on them and a Halloween toy that records your voice and repeats what you said back to you in a "scary voice". She also picked out some gum and some cute shaped erasers.

After the shopping, Melissa got a manicure and spa pedicure, I got a spa pedicure, and the girls had their fingernails and toenails painted. They were super busy at the nail salon, so while Melissa and Emily were finishing up, the rest of us got smoothies for the girls to snack on to tide them over until dinner.

My brother-in-law left for home as we were leaving for church. He had to get back so he could play in his soccer game on Sunday morning. After church we had dinner at Chili's. It was so cold in there that we had to ask them to turn down the A/C. After the kids were finished with their meals, I took them outside to play while everyone else finished up. I took a bunch of photos of the kids jumping off the rocks and just running around the building. Eric even asked me to take a picture several times. I would take the picture and show it to him. He would giggle and go about his business.

So, this wasn't really a traditional birthday celebration, but Natalie had a lot of fun today, and that's all that matters.