Valentine's Day - 2025

Now that the three older kids are out of elementary school, I just have one kiddo left to work on valentines for his classmates.  It's hard knowing that the end of an era is close so I made sure to schedule a block of time for us to work on these together.

James chose to give his friends sour patch kids and I printed a tag to go on each one.

He took the initiative and signed his name to each one and applied a sticky 'dot' to the back to apply them to the outside of the bags.

But the best part was the design of his box to collect valentines in.  He wanted a dinosaur and, working with supplies that we already had available in my craft closet, we cut/glued and assembled quite the masterpiece.  

Miraculously, it made it to school unscathed AND back home again.  He loves it so much that it is now residing in his bedroom on display on the top of his dresser.  His smile in the picture above is one that I hope to remember forever.

Jimmy's Magical Birthday with Friends

A week and a half after Jimmy' actual birthday, we made plans to celebrate in the most MAGICAL way -- with a hired magician to perform a magic show at our house.

At first, I planned to have the show in our living room, but the day before with Steve's suggestion, we chose to set up in the garage.  It gave us the chance to have the magician set up privately while the kids stayed inside the house and ate lunch.  The garage can be heated with our wood-burning stove (it used to belong to my grandparents) and I made some minor adjustments to the backdrop to make it all work.

Sophia helped the birthday boy fill all of the favor bags for his friends:

The favor bags were set up inside with some peanut butter blossom cookies for later.

I served chicken nuggets, mac and cheese, strawberries and apples inside and added a few small details here and there.  

The cupcake tower was a small labor of love.  I used large-sized playing cards and hot-glued them together to create a sturdy enough tower to hold the homemade cupcakes.  I always like to offer both cupcakes and cake.  In doing so, the cupcakes were vanilla and the cake was chocolate.  This was later moved out to the garage for the posse of boys to devour.

The audience of boys was set up in the garage and Jeff included all of them at one point or another so that it was a collaborative effort.  Even Jack was called up to participate.

The birthday boy was definitely involved:

Making magic happen!

Opening gifts from his friends:

Ainsley came over for the show; after all, she is Jimmy's birthday twin.  He was born on Ainsley's 7th birthday.  

The group of boys that joined us for the event:

The birthday boy and his cake.  

You should have seen his face when I showed him the finished product!  I purposely kept it a surprise and while he saw little bits and pieces while I was working on it, I don't think that he imagined how it would all come together.

As I was slicing it and handing out ice cream cups to the kids, I chuckled at how much they loved it too.  The bunny got split up among them -- one took the ears, another took a paw, etc.  It was perfect!

Jimmy's 9th Birthday - February 4, 2025

Jimmy turned 9 this week and we celebrated his last birthday of 'single digits' beginning with our traditional cinnamon rolls on the morning of February 4th:

Posing with all of his siblings before everyone headed to school:

After a day spent at school and basketball practice, we enjoyed Jimmy's dinner of choice (hot dogs and homemade mac and cheese) before opening presents.

As you can see, James chose a "magic theme" for his birthday and while we will be celebrating with a magician (!!!) with all of his friends later this week, I still followed through with the same concept when setting up his gifts in the dining room.

I enjoy a good theme and being able to use signs and wrapping paper to simply elevate the celebration even more is one of my most favorite things.

These two are two peas in a pod ... my two blue-eyed babies.

Jack chose to give Jimmy a big beanbag chair designed like a football.  It was a challenge to wrap and Jimmy spent a lot of time trying to figure out exactly what was in that beast of a box.

Sophia picked out some weighted stuffed alligators for Jimmy (which he loved) and he opened more collector Pokemon cards.  I still don't understand the thrill of them, but he consistently continues to put them on his wish list.

We finished the evening off with brookies and another candle while sang happy birthday to the special boy that completed our family.