Happy Birthday To All

Having a Family Birthday party was such a great idea, conceived and orchestrated beautifully by Laura. She brought all the decorations, the party favors for each child and the ice cream sundae fixings and she and Robert did all the games. The kids loved this! The most precious thing was Hazie was convinced it was her birthday party. I think she wore her birthday hat for two whole days and went to bed wearing it that night. She knows her birthday is coming and just figured this was it. No one tried to tell her any different either.

Hazie's Still 3! And this girl knows how to party!

Here she is 24 hours later
still sporting her Birthday hat.
Hazie is everyone's birthday gift.
Every year!


First we played games.
Here Robert is heading up a game of Uno.

Jewels and Zachy working on their bingo card.

Julia and Spencer trying for bingo!

Then we played Fruit Basket, kind of like musical chairs. Then they had done a game of Birthday Bingo with fun facts for everyone's birth date. You had to go around and ask each other questions like, Did the UFO land in Roswell, New Mexico on your birth date? When you got five in a row you were the winner!

Guess who won the game? Yep, me!

Uncle Robert as Rapunzel!

The last game was a real winner. The moms had gathered some dress-up clothing, accessories, etc. The kids got a chance to dress up Uncle Robert and Uncle Lowell and then Uncle Chris and Grampa. To say they loved this would be an understatement. I must admit I loved seeing them try to put a ladies bathing suit on Robert! It was a very noisy event, perhaps bordering on pandemonium so the photos were tough to get. With the all action most were very blurry.

The big foam orange hat got a lot
of use and notoriety for sure.

Grampa plays along!

Getting Jim in a black dress nearly did me in but it was so great. Only 10 grandkids could ever orchestrate this with him. Too hilarious! Lovin' the little muskrat hat or whatever it is!

Aunt Jen's "bride" Uncle Lowell!

He is quite charming in his tulle!

And he is looking very at home in his very own orange, form cowboy hat. The ten gallon hat and the gigantic comb are just right for him... standing there at 6'8" in all his glory. He has been known to wear this hat before on various occasions.

Sadly not a single picture of Uncle Chris came out. Here he is in the beginning stage of their job on him. With a matted brown wig and a pinafore?? But we can share his form of goofiness in a later post or two. He took a lot of photos at this party so he doesn't appear in many of them. ;-(

Time to sing and have the Birthday sundaes.
Although we're not known for
our fantastic family singing...
this time was an exception.
We shook the rafters!

Make a wish everyone!

Uncle Robert did the honors!
He's our ice cream man!

Very Yummy and no baking (time saver)!

The kids enjoyed opening their bag of
party favors specifically selected
for each one by Auntie Lou Lou.

Most of the kids can share birthdays because 8 of them live in the same town. But this was really a special treat for Spencer and Ross who are always too far away to participate. They all had a very fun party! Thanks Auntie Laura and Uncle Robert~what a wonderful memory for all of them and us too. And Hazie will be so surprised and happy when she gets another party on September 24! Aunt Jen, don't forget to get her another Birthday Hat!

Here is Zachary getting all relaxed and sleepy!
Oh how they did love this before bed each night!

Con and Hazie
Hazie does love her cousins
so much and vice versa!

Julia's big smile pretty much sums up

the first full day of the Reunion.

After this it was scripture reading, family prayer and off to bed for another sleep over for all the cousins. The adults were asleep long before the kids! Well, maybe not Jen and Lowell who shared a common wall with the kids! Where do they get all their energy?