Xavier turned 4

I'll write about it tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, well finally for a birthday party that was on the 9th to celebrate a birthday on the 8th, tomorrow is today.

This little boy of ours sure loves himself some dinosaurs so what would make more sense than to have a dinosaur birthday party. It was something he couldn't quite decide on for a while. I would let him look around pinterest with me at times to see if anything looked like a fun birthday party theme. For the most part all I think that did was make the decision making process harder. Everything was cool & that made him change his mind more & more. Finally mommy had to put her foot down & say, Son, you like dinosaurs so I think a dino party would be great. His response, "ok."

     So simple I don't know why we as parents stress about these things that we are teaching our children to stress about. It's a party to celebrate your birth it's not suppose to be stressful it's suppose to be fun & that's what I tried to make it.      Thank the Lord that he gave us amazing weather to work with for the second weekend in March. We had his birthday party all set up at the local boy scout camp. They have the most amazing pavilion & playground for the kids to run out all that energy. Since we were having it somewhere that wasn't our house this year I knew I couldn't do much with decorations so I decided to try my best to stick the dinosaur theme to the food. Wandered around pinterest some more & found some great ideas. His original cake was going to be in the shape of a dinosaur but mommy made the cake a little too moist & the icing just didn't do anything except make the cake crumble. I started to stress out about it but Skip reminded me that they were kids and that Xavier never knew about the dino shaped cake so he'd be just as happy with cupcakes. Luckily I had picked up some small dinosaurs to stick on top of cupcakes in case that was the route I decided to take in the first place. I guess deep down I knew cupcakes were the easier, kid friendly way to go :)

        So trying to stick with the dinosaur theme through the food worked out pretty well I believe. Everyone seemed to enjoy it especially the birthday boy.  Here are a few pictures of the food but of course I know you want to see more pictures of the party & you can do that over here at  our photo page

And what kind of party would it be without
 some awesome dino hats for the kiddos 

some yummy chicken wings disguised as  "pterodactyl wings" and
some grapes , uh I mean "dinosaur eggs" and we washed it all down with
some "swamp water" which for some reason the store calls hawaiian punch

"velociraptor claws" were thanks to a bag of bugles

slices of watermelon to look like the spikes of a stegosaurus

just your standard veggie tray but had to dino it up specifically for those herbivores 

Chocolate cupcakes & chocolate icing per the request of the birthday boy

"fossils"  sugar cookies with dinosaur foot prints smashed into them

Medieval Times

So yesterday I won some tickets to the Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament show here in Atlanta. We picked Serenity up from school & headed straight there to make sure we would get great seats.
If you have never been, every time your knight wins one of the games the princess gives him some flowers to pass out to the ladies in his section. well last night.....first round of flowers was about to be passed out, Serenity stopped eating, got her hands all wiped off but he had already given all the flowers out. Second round of flowers gets handed out & she's up on her knees (we were in the front row so he could totally see her, getting there that early did pay off ) he was right in front of her, she was super excited, but then he said I have something special for you & continued down the row passing out flowers. she sat down a little sad but then I told her to just wait because he said he had something special. The games continued, he passed out more flowers but not near us. finally the games were over & the princess gave all of the knights a sash to deliver to the "queen of the tournament" in their section. He walked right over to us & said "hmm, who shall I give this too." she had no real clue what was going on. then he pointed his lance towards her & told her to grab the sash. She smiled so big & was so excited. for the rest of the evening that was HER knight. at the end of the show you can get the knights, the princess, & the king's autographs but all she wanted was HER'S. needless to say, mommy & daddy were a sucker for the picture they took of her because it came in the most adorable frame :)  They thoroughly enjoyed it which made this blubbering mess of a mama shed a few tears throughout the night. -which of course it was dark so no one saw me ;)

The 7 Experiment

we have started a new woman's bible study at my church and if you ever have felt like you may not be in a close enough, real relationship with God then let me tell you how we are just barely into it & I can already feel the changes he is making in my life. Things just seem so much clearer & it's crazy because when you take a moment to think about it, suddenly it hits you..... He's been here the whole time waiting for this.
There is an amazing support team of great Godly women who are going through this study with me & I know that God put us all in this study at this time for a reason; it is just up to us to know what that reason is.  For me, I know for me it's as simple as helping me understand I'm not the only christian in the world to fall down, I'm not the only christian in the world to have bad days and most importantly I'm not the only christian in the world that thinks sometimes this thing called life is just way to hard. If you feel like checking it out, which I highly encourage, I've included a link to Jen Hatmaker's website where you can watch a little video that may just change your life for the better.  The 7 Experiment