3:58PM...exactly

We love our Katey Beth! For lots of reasons, really, but this post will be about one of them specifically.

Yesterday was Katey's 9th birthday! We had 3 different birthday celebrations for her this year (one birthday party, as noted in a previous post; one celebration at the lake with the Averill family and one at home last night with the 4 of us and Grammy) - that makes for a LOT of cake and ice cream!!

So, Thursday night as Katey was getting ready for bed I made the comment that I would never hug Katey as an 8 year old again. She quickly corrected me, saying: "Yes you will, I won't be 9 until about 4:00 since that was the time I was born!" I laughed and sent her off to bed.

Come to think of it, we had 4 birthday bashes for this child as I took donuts into her class yesterday to celebrate. All the kids sang Happy Birthday to Katey and after they were finished her teacher asked how old Katey was. Katey proclaimed, "I'm 8 still but at 3:58 I'll be 9!" You gotta love her sense of literalness!

Katey is growing into such a wonderful, sweet-spirited child. She is loving and kind and empathetic. Katey loves to learn and devours books as quickly as she can get her hands on them. It is our prayer that she will grow in wisdom and truth and in her walk with Christ more and more this year. Happy 9th birthday, sweet Katey. We love you so very much!!

Birthday celebration #1:

Birthday celebration #2:
Birthday celebration #3:
(it is hard to get a candle stuck into a hot lava cake!)
And, a couple of shots of Katey around her actual birth day:

Lake Vacation

We had the honor of spending last week in Greensboro, GA with the Averill family in celebration of Mom and Dad's 40th wedding anniversary! What a blessing to have such a wonderful event to celebrate!

The week was filled with swimming, boating, eating, skiing, tubing, eating, laughing, picture-taking, sleeping, fishing and celebrating (and probably a little more eating). We really spent almost every waking moment on the boat or at the table. Annie and Jen would really like the ground to stop moving now as we are in day 5 since being on the boat and still have yet to fully regain land-legs! Of course, the crazy boat driving while trying to flip tube-riders probably didn't help with Jen's motion sickness...

One thing we planned for the week as a gift to Mom and Dad was family pictures. A wonderful photographer, Gloria Slaughter, came to us to take pictures. They turned out beautiful and we couldn't be more pleased! We were a bit ornery and pulled a little joke on the parents...all the kids and grand-kids dressed in crazy colors and played it up like we were ready for pictures. Mom and Dad were good sports but we did have them going and a little worked-up before letting them in on the prank. :)

Oh, one more thing: I'm not saying who it is, but we did learn last week that someone in the Averill family has a "sassy swagger" but it is only because of pigeon toes...or so we have been told! :-)

Here are some fun photos from our wild week!

Grandma up on skis! She is awesome on the water!!

Annie learned to ski - check out the determination on her face! (Aunt Jo learned to ski this week as well!)

Seth LOVED tubing!
He got pretty brave and daring and was even flipped off the tube a couple of times and came up still smiling!

Aunt Christy and Aunt Jo...adorable!

Grandpa fishing with the kids. They both caught a fish!

The cutest little nephew around - NATE!!

Uncle Brandon and Aunt Annie

Oh, what a wonderful trip full of great memories!!

Birthday Party

We celebrated Katey's 9th birthday a little early this year with a fun Olympics of the Mind type party. There were 10 kids in total and we had a great time!

The festivities began with building card houses. The kids worked very hard on them, got very creative and did a great job!

Katey has dubbed this one the bird nest house.

This one was the tallest built!

And this one is the most effort behind a house!

Next up was the Egg Drop competition. The kids had to build a structure that would protect an egg from a 9+ foot drop! Here are the creations:

And our only kid egg that survived:

Mike created an egg contraption as well. Here is video of his being dropped...will it survive??



Poor Daddy!

After the egg drop we did some inventions. The kids got into groups and were each given a bag of items to be used for an invention of their choosing. No pictures of this, but one group made a ramp into a piggy-bank, one made a smoothie stand, one did a crazy, spikey SpongeBob thing and the most creative of all was a radio-active pizza (if you eat it you will glow in the dark so you won't be afraid of the dark anymore!).

Next came cake and ice cream! Katey chose to have a torte-like cake. A delicious pairing of Mom A's homemade chocolate cake with Ann's homemade frosting. YUMMY! And Katey did a great job of choosing colors for frosting. We had left-over batter so you can see we also did some cupcakes.


I couldn't let this post go without attaching the video of Katey blowing out her candles. Enjoy!!



Our last activity of the day was an imagination game - I showed an object and the kids had to come up with things it could be used for. Below is one of Katey's friends using a mop head as a hula skirt! This was a really fun game for the kids and they got very creative!

Overall it was a wonderful day and I think everyone really enjoyed being here to celebrate with our not-so-little-almost-9-year-old Katey! A special thanks to Grammy for all of her help with the party!

If Only...

Seth and I spent some time throwing rocks into a pond today while Katey was busy with her 2nd piano lesson. On the way back to the van a motorcycle passed us. The following conversation then ensued:

Seth: WOW! That motorcycle must have cost a lot, a lot, a lot of money!
Me: Maybe. How much do you think it cost?
S: Welllllll...maybe like about $200!

J: Oh, well how much would it cost to buy a car?
S: Probably around um $400.

J: I see. What do you think it would cost to buy a house like ours?
S: That is really a lot of money! I would say about $1000. But when you first get married you don't have a lot of money and you don't have any money to buy furniture.

J: So how much would it cost to buy a couch?
S: They cost a lot - like $30

J: People need beds to sleep in, so how much would that cost?
S: Maybe about $35. Mommy, my hands are dirty from throwing rocks. We really need to wash them.

And, it was true. His hands were really dirty from throwing rocks (but what fun we had doing it). And, Seth was growing weary of teaching me about the cost of living. If only...

Just to see what she had to say about it, I asked Katey the same questions just now. Her responses?

Motorcycle: Hmmm. Probably about $350
Car: Well, for convertibles it would be over $1000 but cars usually cost between $500 and $1500. (she said with much conviction and a sureness of her figures)
House: Probably about $900. I mean, our house is pretty big.
Couch: At least $50
Bed: $100

Sweet dreams...