Jackson's Birthday Party

We had J's 4th birthday party at a park near our house last Monday.  It's actually the same park where we had his second birthday party two whole years ago!  I know everyone always says this, but I cannot believe he's four already.  It really makes me remember to try to cherish every moment because time really does go by so fast.

My friend Michelle's daughter, Addy, has a birthday two days earlier than Jackson, so we decided to do a joint party for them.  Addy is turning three this year.  We invited pretty much our whole squadron since we were having it at a park and Michelle and I could split the cost of everything.  A ton of people actually came!  I think we had around 25 adults and a bazillion kids.  It was a lot of fun!  My friend Rocky took some great pictures of the day for us, and I was SO thankful for that because if I had tried to take some myself we would have ended up with none at all!  Here are some of the 200 or so that she took...

It was a beautiful day and the kids had so much fun playing, climbing, swinging, running, and kicking balls. We were so happy to have my Mom there to celebrate with us, too!

Sweet Grandy did a lot of pushing the swing while Phil and I were busy...

Here's my friend, Lana, with a brand new baby girl (not hers) in the squadron...

Applying sunscreen to E... the sun is crazy intense here since we're 4,000 feet up and our super fair-skinned babies burn really easily!

Here's our cake that was very yummy but not so wonderfully decorated.  :)  We asked for red, white, and blue decorations since that was kind of what our "theme" was, and for some reason the lady wrote the words in green.  Michelle and I just had to laugh.  Like I said, though, it was really tasty!  Strawberry-almond poppyseed... 

Baby Reid just hangin' out...

Our sweet birthday boy... oh, I could just eat him I love him so much!

All of the kiddos were excited about the cake, but J did not like being sung to!  He never has, really.  He got really shy and backed away and tried to hide his head.  :)

 

Here's J's buddy and fellow birthday girl, Addy, not being shy at all and stepping right up to blow out the candles!

I finally just scooped J up so he could help with the candles.  I knew he wanted to, but was just a little overwhelmed with everyone singing. 

Better now...

 

The cake-cutting was towards the end of the party.  Don't these kiddos look a bit tuckered out? :)

Reid was pretty happy to just hang out during all of the cake excitement...

Michelle and I got inexpensive water bottles as favors for each kiddo.  There were almost 40 kids there!

The hostesses with the mostesses...

Our future's so bright, we gotta wear shades...  :)

Michelle and I were hoping to get Jackson to hug Addy and then have both of them smile sweetly at the camera while Addy held up the tag that said "Thanks for celebrating our birthdays."  Um, yeah.  That didn't really happen like we planned.  J was not wanting to cooperate.  We have about 12 pictures where they are at least a foot apart, Jackson looks totally uncomfortable, and Addy is looking at the ground.  Ha!!  At least A held up the tag like we wanted!  :)

And, to put the cherry on top of a fun and successful party, we got a few decent family pictures!

 

It was really great to get almost the whole squadron together for the afternoon and for all of the kids to get to play and have fun together.  We are really blessed to have so many nice families in our squadron.  All of the kids get along really well together, and the adults do, too!  ;)  Michelle and I figured that we'd better do these type of parties now because in a few years J and A will probably not want their parties combined and will have their own ideas of what they want for their birthdays.  We're hoping we have at least one more year together!

Happy 4th Birthday to our super sweet, wonderful Jackson!  We love you so much!