The night before Morgan's birthday we were gathered in Pepper's room to have family prayer and scripture reading. We were sitting there talking about his birthday the next day and the schedule for the day. Cody and I started telling Morgan about the day he was born and recounting all the crazy events of that day. Morgan was mesmerized and smiling from ear to ear. After we were done, Pepper starting jumping up and down requesting her story as well and Morgan wanted to hear Hazel's too. I love the stories of all my childrens' births but it is true that Morgan's will always be just a bit sweeter. He was my first and it is truly a crazy and amazing story. This sweet, crazy, energetic, exhausting and handsome young man turned me into a mother and I will be forever grateful that he came into my life. I love my buddy boy. I love you, Morgan and will forever!
Morgan asked us to make his birthday morning special. We hung up two birthday banners, got him a big balloon that has Spiderman yelling a birthday message (and I stress yelling) and had a few little presents for him to open. He was very happy and felt very special.
I don't think Pepper could have been more excited if it had been her own birthday.
She LOVES her big brother!
These pics are a bit out of order but such is life. At bathtime on his birthday Morgan got a hold of the camera again and took some pics for me.
He told me to make an angry face.
We let this one take a bath all by herself and she was quite pleased with the extra space.
And having all the toys to herself.
The way she is standing just makes me smile.
On Tuesday morning, I dropped Morgan and Vincenzo off at school then dropped Pepper off at Lafe's house so Lesli could take them to preschool. Then Hazel and I headed back to Morgan's school so we could bring some homemade donuts to his class. Every year Morgan requests I make donuts to bring to school for his birthday. It makes me happy to do this for him and have a nice little birthday tradition that is something other than the usual cupcakes.
Mrs. Gonzales bringing the birthday boy to the front of the class.
Morgan's class singing to him:
I love this kid's smile! I live for it!
Morgan has a great teacher in a great school.
We feel very blessed.
Hazel making faces at her brother's requested birthday dinner.
Big surprise Morgan's birthday dinner request was pasta, meatballs and fruit.
He happily ate every last bit of it too.
This one was less enthused, or just wanted me to put the camera down and feed her.
Two presents Morgan got for his birthday were called apptivities. They are little toys that you can place on top of the iPad and play along with a game app. Morgan was very excited to get home from school and play with his new Batman app toy.
Morgan asked me to video him playing his new game. I thought this was a funny video to document him at 6 years old:
Hazel was happy to watch a movie.
The way she was sitting with her legs crossed just made me smile. Such a little lady.
This picture explains Pepper very well.
Sitting on me and acting life a crazy person!
My birthday boy!
I asked Morgan what he wanted to be when he grew up and he said he wanted to be a daddy. Then he quickly asked if that meant he got to go to work too. I told him yes, cause that's how you make money to live. He thought about it and said that yes he wanted to be a daddy who went to work in an office and got to play on an iPad. Life father like son. I couldn't be happier with his answer.
On Saturday the 26th, Morgan celebrated his 6th birthday by having a party at a local indoor play area, Amazone. I decided to keep the parties simple this year, mainly for myself, and go places instead of doing the parties at home. I was very grateful we had decided to do this because our week leading up to the party was just crazy with our last minute trip to Utah to be with Cody's family. If I had been planning a party at home I probably would have had to cancel it but with this everything contintued as planned. The whole time I kept thinking, "This is too easy. I must be foregetting something. It can't be this easy to have a child's birthday party?!" But it was easy and fun and Morgan loved every minute of it!
The only thing we needed to bring, besides the party people, was the cake. If I'm doing the cake myself, I usually cheat and just make cupcakes. Frosting is not my friend. But Morgan insisted he wanted a cake NOT cupcakes so Cody suggested I make a round cake and make it look like Captain America's shield. Sounded easy enough.
As you can see I'm still not expert with frosting and I struggled a bit with this cake. But all in all it turned out pretty good if I do say so myself. It was two funfetti cakes with a cherry filling and the kids ate it all up. Guess that worked out just fine.
We also kept the guest list pretty simple this year. Two friends from church and two from school. We offered to pick up most of them because they were on the way. Luckily, our friends the Smiths took the girls so that we had room for the other kids and we could keep our focus on Morgan.
Vincenzo, Johnny, Morgan and Rykker
They were excited to party and happily watching Batman on the way.
Their conversations discussing the different super heros was priceless!
Amazone has a large indoor play place, lazer tag and an arcade. Our guests could play on the play place and in the arcade. Plus we had a party room for two hours and a party planner that helped with everything. They also gave the kids lunch, 10 tokens for the arcade games and 100 free tickets to pick out prizes at the end. Great deal!
Morgan off and running.
Our Amazon jungle party room.
It was hard to get the kids to stand still long enough for a picture so they are all a bit blurry. Sarah joined us once we got there.
They said the kids could choose pizza or a hot dog. Some of the kids changed their minds when the food arrived but they had no problem with that and went to get some more hot dogs. Plus they brought us a whole pizza and packaged up the leftovers for us. So nice.
Goofy face from Vincenzo.
Cody engrossed by 6 year old conversations.
It was hard to say who was most excited to open presents, Morgan or his friends.
This is serious work. It was fun that Morgan was able to read some of his cards and that his friends had written most of the words themselves. They are all getting so big!
Finally got the spiderman web shooter he had asked Santa for.
Morgan and his friends all love the game Skylander. Vincenzo failed to tell his mom we do have the game at our house. Morgan was excited to get them anyway. We told him he could keep one and return the others to Target and pick out another toy. He was able to get some Beyblades that way and have his own Skylander person to take to friends' houses. Win win for everyone.
He also got two Lego sets. We have been having lots of fun with those ever since.
He was one happy and lucky little boy.
Here's a video of the birthday boy getting his cake:
Everyone wanted me to take a picture of their blue teeth.
Perfect!
I loved Rykker's frosting goatee so much I forgot to clean him up and he went home looking like that. Oops;)
Sarah requested this picture but I love how I captured Morgan as well. Silly kids.
The kids were having a blast playing with the painted wall and pretending to be Skylander characters. I took a video of the kids going crazy and then I realized it looked more like a video of Morgan beating up his friends. I'm just glad everyone was having a good time and we were able to return everyone home in one piece.
This is what I got when I asked everyone to pose for the picture.
There are no words for the awesomeness of this!
After we fed and sugared the kids up, we let them loose on the arcade. It was a little hard to help everyone with their tokens and make sure they weren't losing any but it worked out and everyone had a great time.
Sarah watching her man kill some giant spiders.
After everyone finished up at the arcade, it was time to pick prizes and go home. One of the kids wanted a prize that cost too many tickets. He was getting pretty upset and we were trying to talk him down. Our party planner, Randy, came over to see what was wrong. We told him the problem and he went right over and got the prize that was wanted. I thought that was a pretty classy move and made me even happier that we had chosen Amazone as our party destination. We had a nice easy drive home watching more Batman and dropping all the kids off. Hazel and Pepper had a great time with the Smiths too. It was a very lovely Saturday.
Before bath time, Morgan wanted to have a little photo shoot with his Skylander character, Stealth Elf.
I was pretty impressed by his photography skills.
Morgan went to bed that night a very happy little man and Cody and I were very happy, and not too tired parents. Yay!
We are a happy little family who live in the Akron, OH area. Cody works for the fabulous Smucker's Company. Our favorite little man Morgan is five and loving life. Our little lady Pepper is almost three and a bundle of girly joy! We welcomed, Hazel to our family and couldn't be more in love with her.
