We held Tyler's birthday party at the ARC on the evening after his birthday. My mom rented a party room for us and we invited as many of the cousins we could think of. We planned to eat before the pool opened for evening swim, and then the kids could go off and play. In hindsight, we should have made more effort to make it seem more like a birthday party. The kids ate so fast and went straight out to the pool that we didn't even gather around and sing Happy Birthday to Tyler. He actually said the next day that it didn't really feel like his birthday. We'll have to try make up for that later when we're back in AZ.
I mentioned in an earlier post that I have 3 cousins who have had new babies this year. Here are the other two. Archer belongs to Miriah, and Macey belongs to Miriah's sister Megan. It'll be so fun for these two sisters to raise their babies together. I was excited to be able to meet them both! Miriah and Megan will both be such great moms, and Janette and Gary are super duper grandparents. They always spoil my kids!
Mary helped out in the pool with Adam and Danica. Adam was all smiles!
Here's Ava with her new BFF, Jezabel. "J" is my mom's neighbor, and is 12 years old. She played so well with Ava, and Ava just latched on to her. All she wanted to do was play with J. J and her brother Easton (Tyler's ND buddy) were able to be at the birthday party.
Here are Tyler and Easton. They had lots of fun playing together the whole time we were there. The kids finally got to experience what it was like to be able to play freely with neighbor kids. Their old enough now, and with J's help, I felt comfortable letting them play outside unsupervised most of the time. I'm sure I'll write more on that later.
Looks like Archer liked the water!
And clearly, Adam did too!
My cousin Andy, however, was not able to enjoy this pool with us this year. He had an accident on his motorcross bike a couple months ago where he shattered his knee and his tibia. He has a long road to recovery ahead of him, but he's a strong guy, I'm sure he'll push through and get back to normal in time.
Ava and J again....
This was the big hit of the pool for most of the kids. Both kids tried it, and Tyler really started to get the hang of it by the end of the trip. Dave and I both tried too, and Dave even tried surfing a couple times--and fell hard. Tyler tried surfing once too, and really took a spill. I'm so proud of both kids for being so brave!
Ava and Danica are good buddies!
A few cousins from my dad's side of the family were able to attend too. I have two cousins that have boys around Tyler's age, so they joined us for the party.
This is such a great picture of Miriah with her hubby and sweet baby boy!
We really had to scramble to get the kids their cupcakes. Our room rental time was up, and none of the kids had had cupcakes. We had to drag them out of the pool so they could get some before we had to be out of the room. I don't think Tyler even had one! The kids were having so much fun swimming, I doubt they would have even missed the cupcakes.
Well, this one may have missed the cupcakes....
Here's is one of my only pictures of the birthday boy at his birthday party--Mom fail! I hope Tyler had a great time swimming with his ND cousins and friends. Thanks to everyone who joined us!
Thanks to Janae for the addition of a few of these photos. It's always great to have a few cameras going, and I appreciate you sharing them with me!
