Year 4, February 16th-17th, 2019: Abishai's 4th Birthday Party

Well, Abishai's 4th birthday party is in the books and we are exhausted!  Because we had spent a good portion of the week preparing, there was very little to do today.  We were able to relax, attend Keturah's last official basketball game with Grandpa, put out food and drink, and wait, and wait, and wait.  The first guests didn't arrive until 2:20pm! I clearly said on the FB event that it started at 2pm.  I knew one was going to be late because her daughter was in a basketball game after ours.  One family was late because the dad is an on call doctor.  Not sure on why the other two families were late.  I just got nervous thinking that no one was going to show up!  But they did, and although this year's gathering was smaller than last year's, we still had a lot of fun.  Abishai led the way, and we were able to do gifts, cake, and pinata in 2 hrs time.  There were no spills, just a big of mess from the pinata (yes, we did it inside!) and a few crumbs.  I think we had about 21 of us.  Benaiah stayed in his room the whole time talking to, you guessed it, his girlfriend for 2 1/2 hrs, PLUS snoozing!  I think he was in that bed for a total of 16 hrs out of 24 hrs.  Sheesh!  But, it's been good to have him around, and to see him relax.  But now we are all exhausted and ready for sleep.  I'm physically hurting from standing so much and moving around.  The weather is ok here, but I feel like I pulled off a marathon or something.  I will have to rest in a big way tomorrow before diving back into school.  Nooooo!!!!! Don't take me back to school!!!!  I've enjoyed our week off because there was less arguing over all because I didn't have to nag about school work.  Sigh.  But alas, we must get back at it!

Sunday will be a full, normal Sunday and Keturah gets to find out what part she has in her kids' choir musical this semester.  It's her last one! I already know, but she wanted to hear it from her choir director first.  I can't wait to see her reaction!  (and I'll post that here) Well, Keturah was tired, and so her reaction was not what I expected.  I should have expected her to be grouchy after a long day of church in the morning, KP worship, and choir.  But I didn't, and now I'm a bit bummer.  She did get one of the 4 major roles though, and plays opposite of her good friend Jordan.  They are "Cher" for cherabim and "Ser(?)" for seraphim, two reporters! Keturah was excited that she won't be standing on risers though and she is anxious to get her book next week.  But now she has to come with us every week at 4pm so she can do her drama rehearsal at 5:30.  So, Sundays will always be hard and Mondays even harder.  Eek! But it's her last musical with Sonshine Kids' Choir and then we have to wait 1 1/2 yrs before Abishai can start.

Otherwise, I woke up feeling like I gotten run over by a Mack truck as they say.  I hit that wall of pain fibromyalgia patients get when they've overdone it.  I'm glad I had a long two weeks of NOT hitting that wall, and that's only because God gave me the strength to keep pushing through.  But, I hit it today, and could barely move and had a constant headache that even excedrin migraine couldn't touch.  But I muddled through one slow step at a time and didn't do much physical work.  No dishes, no cleaning, no putting away of birthday stuff.  And no homeschool prep either, which I'll probably regret, but I've prepared my mind for a not so accomplished week because we do have a field trip and we do need to get back into routine.   Loop scheduling, here we come.  I am just not looking forward to the "do we have to's" again.  And I've heard that we aren't the only homeschoolers that have kids like that, and public school kids feel the same way a lot of the time, so, it's not necessarily how I teach or what I teach.  But anyway, one step at a time, marching along, making progress.  But life will be much slower in general for the next month or so.  Just normal routine stuff for awhile.  Ok, basketball is done on Wednesday and then we pick up Rooted soon on Tuesdays.  But I don't have a bunch of field trips or unusual doctor visits to work around.  It's time to rest and take it slow this week.  Jared is mostly caught up on sleep and feeling more normal.  All the jarring in the train and airplane really messed with him.  He is sleeping more than Gary and a fellow friend Tom is though.  Yes, even Gary is still jet lagged a bit.  And then Gary is off on another trip, this time to Alaska this week!  Ah!  I'm so grateful my man is the one who "holds down the fort" and keeps the office running.  Onward to a new week!  But first, Abishai's birthday!

"Daddy, next time, clean up your own toe crumbs!" - Abishai

Texting war with these two!  Lots of emojis flying around.  Justin texted names of YouTube channels and Jared used emojis that we use when flirting.  Hehe!

This pull along minion balloon is the best!  It has helium in it, but it's weighted down so it doesn't float to the ceiling.  It had a string where you could pull it along behind you but it broke off during the party.  We were trying to wake Benaiah up.  He was AWAKE maybe 11 hrs on Friday and 12 hrs on Saturday.  He spent a good portion of the party time on the phone with the girlfriend, whose mother thought they were on and off the phone several times.  Whoops!  But Benaiah did encourage to do her homework and asked her questions about her reading because he read it last year.  Way to go, B!

We pushed the table back to make more room and I LOVED it!  I wish we could use the table this way all the time!  And it does seem that we bought a ton of decorations, but most of it came in one $60 kit. But after asking the others, we do agree that Abishai tends to be more spoiled, lol.

Daddy's going to sit next to me so I'm saving this seat!

After a calm morning because we had prepared well, we were off to Keturah's final basketball game of the season.  They won!  And she played against a friend, Kaitlyn, from her Sunday School class!

Grandpa came and asked, "Does Keturah ever get the ball?"  And we said, "No, she usually backs away from it."  Poor thing.  But she's learned how to block other players well!

Somebody loves having Daddy home.  Precious.

Too cool for school.

Messing up Justin's hair.

Awesome final score!

Ok, we're ready, where are my friends?  Abishai set out all the cups and set up a whole place setting for himself on the table.

See!  It came out so well!  $10 for the personalized icing sheet!  $17 for the cake from Meijer.  And the whole cake was eaten!

Greeting guests with no shoes on!  Remember, this was pj party, too!  Everybody was 20 minutes late, too, making me nervous that I didn't give out the right address or set the time right, etc.  But we did got 20 minutes longer than I had said, which is fine.  I always expect it to go closer to 3 hrs.  I try to do all the good stuff starting 30 minutes in until 30 minutes before people leave.

Let's go everybody!

The set up in the dining room.  Ok, it does seem like a little too much.  But it was fun to decorate and so worth it!

So cute!  And the packing tape has held up very well!

Justin's attempt at writing "Party is here!"

Keturah put this together on her signboard letting people know they are in the right place.

The idea was for people to take the selfie props and take pictures in front of the big banner but no one explained that so no one did.  I thought the parents could stand on this side of the counter and zoom in for the picture, but the drinks I think are in the way.

Lego activity center and tree with Paw Patrol masks.

Games from Valentine's Day party set up by Keturah.

Pin the badge on Chase game, which we ended up not using.

The pinata! We do NOT get a pinata every year, but we hadn't gotten one for Abishai yet, so this was the year!

What we did while waiting for guests.  Justin playing on his phone on "his" couch.

Keturah reading in her bed.

Benaiah talking to his girlfriend in his bed.  He was "awake" by 11 but stayed in the bed until almost 5 except to eat and use the bathroom . Say what?! But he hardly ever gets to do that, so we let him.  The rule used to be no cell phone in the bedrooms and for the most part, he's not even here so it's not an issue. He does watch YouTube sometimes when he goes to bed, but he's usually done with that before midnight.

Abishai set himself up with lots of drinks and snacks so he wouldn't have to attend the party.

Beautious.

I'm ready, Mom!  I had lots of helpers, especially Keturah.  She opened up the chips and other snacks while I put together the veggie/fruit tray.  Jared cut up the cantaloupe.

Simple snacks in simple everyday containers.

Again, simple.

The Paw Patrol pups on the show get puppy treats at the end of the adventure, so we went with this to kind of represent it.  We used Socks' old dishes he had when he was puppy that I've kept for years.  We filled them with goldfish and chocolate cherries and put the sign in front of a can of dog food and on the old dog mat.

He's got his whole place setting set up.

Here comes soem friends!  Hunter Smith is playing trains, and the two girls are from the Simpson family.

Aw, a Simpson daughter and a Land daughter.

Some of the Webb children with Justin.

A little playtime with another Simpson daughter.  I'm so glad we put a bunch of toys away and now I don't want to move them back in!

And then this happened!  Our friends from Barnyard Bash came to the house to deliver a gift!

Spanky the pony comes to visit!

Petting Spanky!

Mrs. Julie was on her way to a (paid) party, and wanted to stop by to say hi.  She, again, has the most generous heart!  I just love her! I hope to connect more with her this summer.  And one of the Simpson girls got to take care of the horses and earn some money for the Believe trip this weekend.  That's how Julie works though.  This is Spanky, by the way, who was a newborn a couple of years ago when we met them. 

It's not everyday that a horse shoes up at your door!  It's a good thing Socks was hanging out with Benaiah in his room.  I didn't even think about seeing that interaction between horse and a dog almost the size of the horse.  Thank you, Julie, for your generosity!

Snacktime!

Abishai decided to do presents first.  He got a ton of books, coloring books, search and find books, activity books, and no toys! Yeah!  We wanted some Paw Patrol books of our own!

Boy, you have to open the card first!

Cake time!

Playing Uno.  And Socks had gotten in the middle of the game at one point when I finally let him out of the boys' room.

Awwww

He's awesome at blowing out all the candles!

Using the floss method to cut the cake.  It seemed like the printed icing layer cut very well.  Yeah!

So, that's what that icing layer looks like from the side.  It's almost like a sheet of paper, but more delicate.

Pinata time!  At first, I didn't think it would break by just hitting it.  You can hit it or pull the strings, one at  time, until the bottom opens up.  5 whacks per person.

A Webb boy.

Hunter

And finally we did pull the strings and bam, we had candy, toys, and pieces of pinata everywhere, lol.

Time to pick out some prizes! No one was greedy either.  Oh, and there were zero spills and only a few crumbs of food here and there.  Yeah!  It's hard doing an indoor party but we manage!

The aftermath.

Older siblings talking.  These two might room together this summer at Mix.

Just making sure I show off all the decorations!

Adults conversing.  Jared said he was tired from being "on" the whole time.  I'm glad he could express that instead of just being grouchy.  I was tired, too.

It's my party and I'll play video games in a faux leather lazy by chair with just underwear on if I want to.  Bwahahahaha, leaving the dream there, kid?

When I let Socks out, he wanted to e right in the middle of the action.  No one was afraid of them, which is great.

Aww, Socks knows a dog man when he sees him.  This is Mr. Brian Vandemon.  They've been members of the church for years and years.  We've been to their old house a couple of times, once for some youth group bonfire thing when Aaron was still in high school and we were "sponsors."

Abishai loves his new search and find books!

Benaiah emerges from his warm cocoon in his bed.

Captain Underpants (I don't like the show or books or whatever, but it is a cute caption for this cute boy).  And when Abishai plays the big video games, he puts his whole body into the action, twisting his body the direction the solider is going, backing up if necessary, climbing on the table if the character slid over large rock.  This guy needs movement!

Awwww, doesn't he look smitten with her?  So sweet!

Last time Gary and Leah can use this special candle holder.  It was made in 1983 for Avon.  You show off the side of it that has the age of the kid on it 1-4 yrs old.  Awww.

Is all of this for me?!

A coloring book!

Pups with hang gliders!

A punching ball.

What could it be?

A Chase rescue other animals vehicle set!

Abishai had his fork and spoon poised and ready.  And then when the candles were off, he stuck his fingers in the icing!  And then he didn't even want cake!  He only ate ice cream!

Bwahahahaha, this totally captures the two personalities!  Gary said, "I just haven't added all of Jared's tasks yet.  Bwahahahahaha!

So we added some tasks to Jared's side.  Keturah hated what I wrote for her, so she erased it.  Party pooper.

The End