Making sweet memories!

This week, we've been partying! Dave's birthday was Saturday and Molly and I took full advantage of having something to celebrate. I have been blessed with a mom who LOVES birthdays and who goes out of her way to make her loved ones feel special. She always calls us first thing in the morning on our special days to sing Happy Birthday and she's famous for her creative cakes!  I've inherited that love for celebration and I'm already doing my best to pass that on to Molly. This year, Molly can really help out with the partying too... she's big enough to pick out what kind of cake to make and she can help with decorating. She's not so great at keeping secrets... she let the cat out of the bag about a couple of Dave's presents. She was REALLY excited about the boxers that she picked out for him at Old Navy- okay... I know that underwear is kind of a boring present, but when they've got squirrels and rubber ducks on them, they're fun AND functional! We had a really fun family party at Nana and Papi's house and were able to share the cake and ice cream with Beth, Logan and Kevin too. What a wonderful way to celebrate such a wonderful husband and daddy. Happy Birthday, Dave!

Painting was popular this week... we worked on a project where we painted farm animals.

Molly adding the finishing touches to her card for Dave.

We were really excited about forts this week too... dolls, stuffed animals and people are welcome to hide out with us under the blankets... come on down!

We had some very sweet moments under our tent, reading stories with flashlights and snuggling before bed.

Friday night we went out to Elmhurst and gave Molly some quality time with her grandparents while Dave and I had dinner out. We tried Fuego Loco in Oak Park. It was great... tasty mexican food, a little live mariachi music and of course, some birthday molten lava cake!

I can't pass up a watershed moment. We found ourselves on the continental divide on our walk back to the car!

MORE SPRINKLES! The funfetti cake obviously didn't have enough sprinkles in the mix, so we added a few more of our own.

Molly had been very polite while we were making the cake... "Mama, can I please snitch one?" she would ask before she ate a piece of candy. Then she was overwhelmed by temptation and tried to shove all these worms in her mouth, just after I took the picture.

Molly picked out our cake motif... Choo Choo!

The finished card... with Pop up action! Birthday ROAR!

Yay for practical gifts! Dave got socks, undies, and undershirts... and a few things just for fun!

Logan looks like he's going into cake coma!

More forts! We added an annex onto our fort tonight to make room for Daddy!