leah's birthday weekend.

we celebrated leah's 6th birthday this past weekend and had an amazing time! here's a run down (including pictures) of how our long weekend played out.

_thursday_
my mom and dad drove in from missouri late thursday night. my uncle was supposed to come along too, but he wrote the wrong date down on his calendar and missed the trip here -- again. he was supposed to come for alana's birthday last spring, but ended up not coming because he got the flu. he called to apologize and let me know that it was nothing against me. bless his heart. i just feel bad for him because i know he wanted to come so badly!

_friday_
mom, dad, and i dropped the girls off at school. on the way home, we decide that bob evan's sounds pretty good for breakfast, so we swing on in. i ate my favorite breakfast there - stuffed blueberry pancakes. has anyone ever had these? they are TO DIE FOR. my mom and i think i love them so much because they combine my two favorite breakfast foods - blueberry pancakes and donuts (the 'stuffed' part of the pancakes is like the filling you find in donuts.)

for lunch, we ate out again at one of my favorite local bar-b-que places. we had wonderful conversation and i enjoyed every second of being an only child during that meal! after lunch, we headed home where we began to make birthday party preparations. we hung decorations and got everything organized just so.

after picking up leah and alana (and our friend, ethan) from school, we headed home to wait for leah's guests to arrive. all in all, there were 7 kids and 7 adults. we ate pizza and breadsticks, drank lots of pop, ate ice cream sundaes and candy from the pinata. we nearly popped at the seams! leah got tons of fun stuff from her friends, including no less than 14 high school musical t-shirts. all in all, the party was a huge success!

alana and ethan - they swear they are boyfriend/girlfriend.

leah opening her presents. HSM and jonas brothers abound...

sarah, macy, leah, lexi, and alana

the whole gang - andrew, ethan, sarah, lexi, macy, leah, and alana

the kids had a ball with the pinata!

CANDY!!!

me and my two best friends terri (lexi and andrew's mom) and barbie (ethan's mom)

leah, ethan, and andrew eating ice cream sundaes.


alana enjoying her ice cream.

blowing out her candles on her ice cream sundae.

bffs - macy and leah - with their matching t-shirts.

_saturday_
thankfully, we slept in a little on saturday morning. i forgot to give leah her medicine on friday night and i felt like the worst mom ever. the two of us were up all night with her puking and coughing. it was no fun.

anyway, the weather was absolutely beautiful and we headed to the apple orchard to celebrate the autumn weather.

this is me and my parents. aren't they so stinkin' cute?

and here we are being huge dorks.

we ate tons of apples as we walked through the orchard. alana and leah did an awesome job finding really great apples. we ended up with 2 pecks of apples in all. that's a lot of apples! after our hard work, we searched for the perfect baby pumpkins.




and we took the picture that we take every year of mama and her babies...



we enjoyed some apple fondue and elephant ears and called it a day. it was such a wonderful, relaxing time!

after a lunch and an afternoon nap, we celebrated leah's birthday again with our family. my sister and nieces couldn't make it for the actual party, but they came in later that evening. it was so weird not to have a full house of partiers! usually, we are packed in there, but this year, it was very quiet. i didn't really like it. it's way more fun when everyone can attend.



she cried and cried the night before because she didn't get her bike. i had "promised" her a new bike for her birthday if she had learned how to ride without training wheels over the summer. well, when she didn't get her bike at her friend party, she was beyond upset with me! little did she know, her new bike was hidden in the back of jas's jeep.

after all the presents were opened, jason snuck into the garage. he wheeled the bike to the front of the house and rang the doorbell. we made leah answer it and this is what transpired.

it was so fun to watch her excitement! and she wasted no time hopping on and taking it for a spin!

perhaps *my* favorite birthday gift that she received was a new sno cone maker. the girls love to eat sno cones, but all we have is a snoopy one that you have to crank by hand. it takes about 20 minutes to get a dixie cup full of sno cone. well, my mom being the fantastic gift hunter that she is, found an electric sno cone maker. she even bought several bottles of flavoring to go along with it. the funniest thing was when leah opened the boxes that held the bottles of flavoring. she took them out and said, "wine?!" it was hilarious!! anyway, here we are sampling the many flavors of sno cones.

alana and pop.

uncle steve and aunt meg.

leah's very blue teeth!

grandpa, grandma, and leah.

and, of course, we had cake. i made it and leah asked if she could decorate it. she put about 2 bottles full of sprinkles and candy balls on it. and while it was probably the most colorful cake i've ever seen, it was definitely the crunchiest!



the festivities ended yesterday between leah's double header. everyone went home and the house felt empty. the girls crashed at 7:30pm from exhaustion! it was a long weekend, but a fantastic one! and i still can't believe my baby is 6...before i know it, she'll be asking to borrow the car for the weekend.

time. must. slow. down.