Celebration, silliness & yumi-licious

Surprise! for Genevieve

 We threw an early birthday bash for Genevieve. Her dad had the day off, Aunties Cherise and Alyssa were here and Uncle Rylan had a rare Sunday off so we had a PARTY!!! I think she was a little surprised.

Ordered a Pizza Hut feast online and they had it at our door in a half an hour. Everybody loves pizza, pasta, pop from Pizza Hut and it went perfectly with the watermelon that was left from brunch. With eight grandchildren at the table! It was a super super supper.

This is reminiscent of birthdays of bygone days when our kids were little. 

Lyssa, Lita, and Reesie

 Or as they're known today as Mom, Mommy or Momma
 sometime known as Alyssa, Lalita and Cherise.
Joylynn brought a VCR over last night and we watched hours of tape of these three & her dancing and lip-syncing to all kinds of '80s and '90s songs. I wish Lalita had been here to see them as well.

I love watching these guys interact

Garrett and Katie are soooo two! What he lacks in verbal communication skills, he makes up for in non-verbal button pushing. They get along like great buddies and then they scrap like cats and dogs. I'm sure that they are going to be great friends when they grow up.

The play house looked a bit like a clown car this morning with all of the kids packed in there playing.

Rowan wanted to pretend to  be a robot, so Grampa got him an empty red vines container for a helmet.  Pretty soon we had a whole passel of them. Good thing Harlan saved all of our red vine containers from our movie watching over the years. We usually use them for popcorn these days. But they make pretty cool helmets.

The Clackamas Old Spaghetti Factory

Cherise and Kiel went to their local, San Diego, Old Spaghetti Factory the night before Cherise flew up here.  Alyssa has been craving their food ever since she heard that. So we just had to go there for lunch before Reesie and Anabelle headed back home.

The gang that was able to be there.

The trolley was a big draw for the kids. Alyssa took them there for a look-see before our meals came.  I took them back over there after they were done eating.

Playing around outside

It's so hard to keep little guys with full tummies to sit and wait for the rest of the gang to be done. We headed outside. Aside from some cars at the very end of the parking lot, ours were the only two vehicles around.  It was a great chance to run off some energy. Garrett likes having big kids around and tried to imitate everything Rowan did.

Rowie walked the full length of the curb and balanced the whole way. Garrett stepped up with his right foot on the curb and stepped forward in the dirt with his left.  He didn't understand the balancing thing but it was fun following his big cousin.

Back home only to leave again

We got home with 10 minutes to spare before Wyatt, Genevieve and Danika got out of school. I had everybody get out of the van and I snapped this pic of Gar-bear as I was pulling out.

Life is pretty full these days!