First Birthday of the Year...and photos!

HAPPY BITRHDAY FLANNERY

The first birthday of the year has arrived! Flannery turned eight. Hard to imagine! Her day was filled with a lot of fun. Earlier in the day Jeremiah went to pick up some new baby chicks. We got 10 Buff Orpingtons and 2 Americanas. The Americanas lay green/blue eggs. That will be cool. I can only hope that none of them are roosters. Once we got the chicks settled we headed off to get Flannery her birthday presents. She really likes Hello Kitty. I remembered that there was a Sanrio store at the mall in the city. We went there first. This mall was 20 times worse than the mall by our house! Yuck! We trudged through the crowds. I couldn't believe how crowded it was. And we finally hit our destination.


Flannery and her birthday sign. This year I had the help of some wonderful women from a study group I am in. We are going through the book, "Created to be His Helpmeet". I had fallen ill this past week and hadn't gotten around to getting the necessary supplies for the sign. So right before the study I ran to the dollar store and got poster board and markers. It was late by the time study finished and I had only gotten the outlines done. And these wonderful ladies helped me color the sign in. If they hadn't I would have been up till 2 AM! Flannery LOVED her sign.



Here was our first stop. Of course the girls wanted everything in the store.

See? We got a lot of, "Ohhh, look at this...can I have it?" Ha! Um no, it's not your birthday, go put it back.

Even Jed wasn't exempt from the temptation. He saw a Hello Kitty in an elephant suite. He had to give it a squeeze. He played with it the whole time we were there, and was disappointed to have to leave it behind.

Isabella I think was a bit on the old side for the store. So she casually looked around, but wasn't all that interested. Now, had this been a store with a bunch of dragons in it.....lets just say that would have been a different story.

The official birthday "cake". This was the brownie recipe with a peanut butter topping. I did use a chocolate bar for the writing. The other chocolate recipe that I found that was healthy only stayed fluid for maybe 30 seconds. That didn't allow me enough time to write! So I went with a Hershey's bar (shhhh, don't tell anyone!). I have to say had I made this pre-sugar free, we would have probably spit it out. It certainly wasn't to die for, but we all enjoyed it. It really did fill you up fast! One piece was all we could handle. Saoirse was asking for it for her birthday. So it wasn't a flop, but not the wonder I was hoping for. I think I will keep my eyes open for other healthy recipes.

The birthday girl and a few eager children ready to dive in.

Jonah was having a lot of fun!




That's it for birthday photos. Yesterday we had a family over for a while. We all had a lot of fun. After they left I took Jonah out to see the chicks. He was not very excited about being in the storage room. Therefore he wasn't too keen on the chicks. Oh well. After that I decided to let him hang outside for a bit. It has been sooooo cold down here the past few weeks. This weekend was actually mild so I let him loose.

Have I told you all how much I am loving my new camera? I have such a long way to go learning how to work it, but I'm having a blast. See how wonderfully blurred the background is? I love that!

Oh, see, more blurred backgrounds. The blurred backgrounds let your subject be the focus. I just love that :-)

Oh, and see here, the things in the foreground get blurred too. How cool is that? Only Jonah is in focus. Never mind the handful of pictures I had to delete because I had the point of focus wrong....ha, ha.

Jonah just being silly. He is such a cutie pie. You can't really see it in this photo but Jonah's hair is now sticking out beyond his ears. So very adorable. All too soon it will be time for a haircut, which will make him look like a big boy :-( Boo hoo.

I love this shot. He was just about to throw a rock. And look I hit is just right, with is foot off the ground.

Saoirse is usually the camera queen. She absolutely loves the attention of getting her picture taken. Well last night she was being fussy about it. But I decided to take her picture anyways to show her how silly she was being. She didn't find that silly. Hmmm. I did, I was sitting there laughing. Oh, well, maybe when she is 20 she will laugh about it.

See? Silliness. I laugh, she pouted. Thankfully she is in better spirits today.

For some reason I like this shot, not sure why. She was actually trying to collect a stash of rocks. She made this rather large pile and then asked if she could take her rock collection inside. Ummm, do you see the size of that rock she has? I don't think so! More pouting.

Look at the cuteness factor of this one! I love it. I'm making sure to end with a cute picture. We wouldn't want Saoirse's poutiness to rub off on anyone :-) We have a busy week ahead of us. Speech therapy, a get together, or two, Bible Study, and the first soccer game of the season!! Soccer? Already? Wow, time flies. I need to go around looking for their jerseys. Off to make breakfast and get set for the day.