Hezekiah’s Birthday Weekend

I’m here to tell you that Kiah’s birthday weekend was an absolute blast.

We didn’t have a party.

The cake almost didn’t happen.

I used a stapler and the closest sharpie I could find to fabricate him a strange crown.

I unearthed a shirt that said “Birthday Boy”

I used a gift card to buy him some presents.

And we loved him to death.

It wasn’t Pinterest-perfect, not even close.

But it was perfect.

For the first time in a long time, we had the entire extended family here for the weekend! My parents and my brother and sister-in-law with their twins came just for Kiah’s birthday!

We went to a nearby fall festival and walked around for a bit.

Tera kept asking to ride the pony, but the real pony rides were out of our budget. Finally, I figured out that she didn’t even know that there were real ponies, she just wanted to ride this pony! Ha!

Tera snuck into Kiah’s stroller so I put Kiah right on top of her. It was cute until he fell on the ground.

Kiah, Levi and Everett.

Fascinating.

I had completely forgotten about presents, to be honest. I did feel a lot of Mom guilt about how Kiah’s first birthday was going. I almost burst into tears in the store when I discovered that they didn’t have a 1 candle. A few minutes later, Heavenly was walking down an aisle and spotted an abandoned cart with a 1 candle in it. We watched that cart like a hawk for about 10 minutes, but no one claimed it so we grabbed the candle! Hopefully someone didn’t bring their child back from the restroom only to discover the candle had been stolen!

Somehow, though, we pulled it together and Kiah got a lot of presents! It was a huge blessing to my Mama heart. And, of course, when one is not the first child, the other children “help” open presents.

On Sunday afternoon we went and got some family photos taken. It was an absolute blast, even though all the pictures from the back of my camera make it look like an absolute disaster. Our photographer was AMAZING and I haven’t even seen the pictures yet. She was so great with our kids and patient and I’m hoping she managed to get at least a few good ones of all of us.

Whole family (minus Heavenly, who took this picture!)

We had really wanted outdoor pictures, but it was rainy, cold and really windy so we opted for an indoor space that our photographer rented. It was a really cool warehouse with a ton of light and lots of antique furniture and props to use.

After we got home from the photoshoot, we were exhausted. We all laid around on couches and fed the babies and considered going to bed at 4:30pm. Of course, there were several children who had more energy than they knew what to do with.