How to Train a Dragon Sleepover!

Cole has been dying to have a sleepover lately so we decided he could have a few friends spend the night for his 5th birthday.  He was so excited and decided it would be a How to Train a Dragon themed sleepover.  We carefully picked the boys we thought would be able to make it through the night with us, and Cole was so sweet to insist that Jordan be included too!  He kept saying “Only boys allowed- except Jordan!”  We brought all the boys home with us from church Wednesday night so that they could be with Cole on his actual birthday Thursday.  They were a little hyped up to say the least! 

They opened presents first and really enjoyed playing with all the dragons and viking toys! 

Then it was cupcake time!  They all had some serious opinions over which cupcake they needed!

Happy Birthday to Cole!!!

“Hey! Do I get one?!?!”

Next up… popcorn and a movie!  Daddy makes the best stovetop popcorn!

Bedtime???

Proof that they did finally sleep!  I was kinda afraid to take this picture!

Cole’s favorite breakfast!  Chocolate Chip Pancakes!

After breakfast, we played inside for a bit… building forts, battling, and stuff.  When that got too rowdy, we all headed outside for a baseball game and later even practiced our dragon training skills.

Emery and Mercer joined us for pizza and then everyone headed home for naps!

To say that Cole was a little worn out from all the fun might be a little understatement!

He perked right up and asked for Quey’s (Huey’s) for dinner though!  That boy loves to shoot the toothpicks!

We surprised him with fun trip to ChuckECheese after dinner too!  And let me just tell ya… the boy racked up!  He played this pirate ship steering wheel game, and he told us he was going to win the 100 tickets.  Murray and I both tried to tell him that it would be really hard to win them, but look what that boy did!!!!  You should have heard/seen us when we realized he got it.  You would have thought he had won us a million dollars, but we were just so excited for him to get 100 tickets on his birthday!  He was so proud and pulled them completely stretched out all through the restaurant for everyone to see.  Haha.  The girl at the prize counter was swamped and just kept handing Cole and Jordan huge prizes to keep us from getting a bunch of little things.  Although we probably paid enough, there’s no way we earned nearly enough tickets for these things, but they were pumped!

All in all, it was a big birthday success!  We love you Cole and had a blast celebrating #5 with you!

The Lake is Great (Part 4)

We had so much fun hosting our “Louisville” friends at the lake back in July.  I say “Louisville” because we were all there together at least for a little while, but now only one family still lives there.  These guys were our family there, and we miss them like crazy!  So weekends like this are super special!  You can guess how many pictures I took… a million!  I’ll comment on some, but mostly I just want to hang on to these precious memories!  They also are not in great order either, but the weekend consisted of all the same stuff repeated over and over so order doesn’t really matter!

Cole gave the “how-to-ski” demonstration and then the other kids gave it a try!  Everyone who wanted to managed to get up and ski!  We had some pretty happy smiles and proud kiddos!

All the kids loved being tossed into the water, but I had to share this sequence of Cole that I captured!

We love these 3 families so much and are so grateful for the effort it took to load up all these kids and drive to the lake!  It was definitely worth it, but it will probably take another year before we are all up for it again.  Haha.  Seriously- can’t wait to be with all of you again SOON!