A Shower for Baby Micah

My good friend Tara threw me a baby shower for little Micah this weekend. It was so cute and Tara made the most amazing cupcakes that I have ever eaten! Homemade cream cheese icing: need I say more! I think I ate 3... and I really wanted to eat more! 

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All of my favorite people were there! Linda the mother-in-law, Cassi, and Rachael the baby sister.

Amie, and some friends from work: Nicol and Lisa, my mom and me.
Hey, Look! I'm in a photo and I'm pregnant. That doesn't happen to often!

Amanda and Sara the middle sister. 

Evelyn, Andrea and Laura. (Andrea is due in late December and Laura is due in November.)

A few other people were hiding from the camera: Lynn, Melissa, Rebekah, Sheri, Celeste, and Tara.

Here's Noodle (Tara's #1) and Kelsie, my niece who even wore her beautiful party clothes that I got for her!

And one more time... did I mention the cupcakes were AMAZING??? I'm gonna have dreams about those cupcakes!

Orlando Dealer Convention

So, just a few days at home and we're off an another adventure! Honestly, I never really unpacked from our family beach trip with my mom. I just washed clothes and put them back in bags and edited an outfit or two. Jeremy was super excited to be back in the car as you can see!

This trip involves a drive down to Orlando for Joey's business Badcock Furniture dealer meeting. Every year it is held in some really fun town and every few years (work is family business thing for Joey) we are allowed to go (although we are really there for more fun and less business.) Our first plan was to hit up Downtown Disney because its free fun! We grabbed Matthew to rescue him from the "fancy dinner night" that he would otherwise have been attending. The boys really just wanted to spend all their time at the Lego store. 

Later that night we hopped on the monorail for a ride around Disney and ended up at the Polynesian resort to watch the fireworks from the Magic Kingdom that were right across the lake. I LOVE FIREWORKS! Really I do!

Night one, we stayed at a different hotel than the rest of the family because we weren't sure if we'd be able to come down this early. Matthew stayed with us. These two are inseparable...  can't you tell.

The next day, we checked our next hotel, Disney's Coronado Springs, where the Convention was being held. All the kids were amazed by the pool and water slide.

Jeremy showing off his muscles before attempting the water slide.

Jeremy on the waterside that was over 200 feet long!

That night we had a very special dinner at Epcot that was all set up just for us. Now I'm wondering why I didn't take more pictures... Mickey even made a special appearance. After dinner we were allowed to wander around the park for a few hours and then right before the fireworks went off Disney had a special dessert bar set up with 50 different types of fancy desserts that were mostly chocolate (music to a pregnant woman's ears!) When we overloaded from chocolate and fireworks we were ushered to the new ride SOARIN where we (all the Badcock dealers and their families) had the ride to ourselves for the last 2.5 hours of the evening. Jeremy was so excited and we rode it about 3 times in a row!

Before we left, Nanny and Papa took us to lunch at T-Rex at Downtown Disney. All the kids had really wanted to go here before so Nanny and Papa took us! Also they all got Build-A-Dino animals!

What the kids did 99% of the trip.

The boys being bribed to put the electronic devices down for a
few minutes! (Notice Jeremy is still clicking on something) 

Thanks Nanny and Papa!

 And here are a few family pictures... I guess you may actually want to see what I look like pregnant. (Here I am at 31ish weeks)

 And the Herndon family!

A Birthday Party for Jeremy!

The hard part of having a birthday in the middle of the summer is that everyone is out of town. So we had to wait almost a month to have a party. Every year when we throw a party it rains. Every. Year. But surely having a party a month late meant that we would be exempt this time... right? Well, we started the party out at home with some homemade pizza and cake. Sounds great right? Yeah, I thought so too until the power went out as we were cooking the pizzas. We were able to finish cooking them on the gas grill. 

A friend of mine mentioned recently that dark photos with lots of people look better in black and white... so here you go: 

 Thank you to Tara for decorating Jeremy's cake! It looks beautiful! And he was so excited about his gator cake!

 Oh, and the power came on just in time to blow out the candles on the cake! Yeah!

 So, the rest of the party was spent at Fun Station playing laser tag, mini golf and bumper boats! I think everyone had a great time!  Here are the men and kids going in for their first game!

The only way to play mini golf with 8 kids is to let them play however they want to! For example: Hopers played shovel-golf where you just shovel the ball right into the hole.  And Jeremy, Matthew and Jake a played speed golf where you hit it quickly before the ball ever stops moving and eventually kick it into the hole. Although, Noodle played the correct way and kept score her self so that she knows how awesome she did... although it probably irritated her that no one else would take it seriously. Some how the kids managed to play 2 full rounds of golf in under 45 minutes. But, they were happy! 

 I completely forgot that the kids would get soaked on the bumper boats and I wasn't prepared for bringing home 9 drenched kiddos.

 Yeah for Jeremy's Birthday!

Jeremy is 8!

I can't believe it! My little boy is 8! We didn't celebrate by having just a one day event... we had a WHOLE WEEKS worth of fun! We started on Tuesday with dinner with Mimi and some bowling with the Mimi, YaYa and RayRay. Wednesday was the 4th of July, so we took advantage of daddy being off work and went to the golf course. Jeremy went to a golf camp earlier in the summer so he did pretty well! He even got Par on one hole! 

That night we fought the heat, humidity, gnats and sweat to watch the fireworks with the cousins. This was the first year that Jeremy didn't have a complete meltdown about fireworks! He has always been terrified of them which is really sad because I LOVE fireworks! This year, as long as I covered Jeremy's ears as hard as I could, he was fine! 

On Thursday we saw the Spiderman movie with the cousins again. And Friday we saw The Lorax with Mimi. On Saturday, the morning of Jeremy's birthday, we decorated his room! He was actually laying in bed completely passed out with the light on when I took this photo! Ha Ha!

We had breakfast with Mimi, Ya ya, Ray Ray and Steven. I made waffles and my mom made cinnamon rolls.

After breakfast we spent the afternoon with another birthday boy, Silas! 

Sometime in the day, we went bowling.

I'm just so excited and sad at the same time that my baby is now 8! It certainly has been a fun eight years!