Family Life: Summer birthdays

Summer is such a busy time, and add to that our two kids with summer birthdays, Abby and Jim, and you'll find out why this post is weeks late. We did have a lot of fun celebrating their birthdays. This is a year for "friend" birthdays, so we had parties planned and invited friends along.

Abby had four friends join her at Blast-off, a local indoor gym/arcade place. She had a good time playing tag around the playground and playing games and drinking lots of pop. She chose a hula theme and every girl got a lei, necklace, and had cupcakes.

Abby's cake at home turned out really cute. We had a barbie doll inside a dome cake, and the cake was her hula skirt. However, I had the bright idea to use sparklers instead of candles on her cake. After I lit them, the house started filling with smoke, sparks were landing on my arms and feet and in the carpet, and we were all choking so badly on the smoke we could hardly sing! It was a memorable birthday song for her!

Abby with her hula cake. :)

Took all day to make the cake, but it turned out great.

This bouquet of flowers from Grammy had hidden dollar bill blossoms in the arrangement.

Abby was a smart shopper and took her birthday money and bought a bike for $20 and a bike seat cover for it. She now has a newer, good-working bike she can ride around the neighborhood.

Abby got some wonderful gifts, including these jeans, books, games, clothes, a gift card, and a chalk tool for writing on the sidewalk.

Jimmy's birthday was a little harder to plan... when you're turning 14 your friends are important and it's important to be "cool." So he invited two friends and his brother to go to Riot Zone for mini golfing. When they got there, they actually didn't golf... they rode go karts, bumper boats, and played on huge inflatable bounce houses doused in water. They had a great time being teenage crazy boys. ;)

For Jim's "family" party he wanted a Star Wars theme. He showed me this small model space ship, and asked me to create a star cruiser cake. Now, that was tough! And the fact that it's all frosted in shades of gray makes it look less appetizing, but hey, it's a ship. We had cake, root beers floats, and pizza and breadsticks. All the stuff a teenage boy enjoys.