Happy Birthday to me!

I was so blessed to celebrate my day with so many special people in my life! My best friend (Since Jr. High) Breanne came into town with her 4 kiddos from Utah and her sweet parents and all joined us for my Birthday dinner at my mom and dad's. :)
My boys made me feel special all day long singing happy birthday and saying it all the time. We started out at Denny's and then went to church, naps and mom and dad's. It was a wonderful day! Thanks to all my friends and family that sent texts, emails and phone calls to add in the days "specialness." I sure am grateful for the last 32 years and consider myself blessed!

Thank you mom and dad!!

My parents are wonderful! They are wonderful for many different reasons, and one of them is for their great ideas! My birthday is tomorrow and they were heading up to Show Low for 2 days before (this Th to Sat) and they offered to take the boys so that I could have two days to do as I wished. Wow, what a gift! Thursday night Jay and I were able to have a quiet dinner together, and go shopping, talk a ton and really enjoy some time just he and I. Friday I was able to do a few chores and go shopping for 4 hours by myself. I rested and read and painted my nails, it was awesome! Then last night 2 of our amazing couple friends from church joined us for dinner at PF Changs and games at our house.

Christy, Lisa and I during games. The six of us played Loaded questions and all cracked each other up til midnight, oh my goodness I can't remember the last time I was up that late playing games... so fun!
Yeah for free chocolate dessert on the "Chang er"
Our clan... Nathan, Christy, Kirstin, Jay, Dan and Lisa. We are all quickly becoming each others best buds.... and our kids all love hanging out too (when we include them. :) God, all six of us consider ourselves so blessed by the friendships you have brought together, thank you!

Jedi Training

One of the greatest joys as a parent is watching your children enjoy life. As you know Caeden is a Star Wars fanatic. At Disneyland they had a show called Jedi training and they choose people from the audience to participate. Caeden got chosen. They robed him, taught him how to use his light saber to fight Darth Vader and then DV came up out of the floor with smoke and storm troopers and he got to "fight" him. :) Here is a little clip.... enjoy!

Disney

Yeah Splash Mountain!! Caeden really enjoyed that he could go on so many of the "big people" rides. We hit all the favorites during the day and so enjoyed our day together!!
We didn't know how Caleb would do with the characters, but luckily he loved everyone of them. He also was a huge trooper during the day, he only took a 45 minute nap and was smiles all day long.

Pooh kissed mom right before this picture, it was so cute. Caeden took pictures all day at Disneyland with his "own" camera, and we have all enjoyed looking at things from his perspective during the day. This was one of his shots where we ate lunch. Look below for a video of one of his favorite parts of the day.

Great Vacation!!!!

We just spent 4 wonderful days in New Port Beach, California for my mom's birthday (and Caeden's too). I so love that my oldest son is a lover of the ocean like I am. We were blessed with amazing weather on Thursday Nov 4th and mom, C and I all swam in the ocean. :)
The 4 of us enjoyed a Sunday morning breakfast at Ruby's at the end of the pier which was fabulous!
Here's the whole family at our beach house. We had a wonderful time playing games, eating, relaxing, watching football, swimming in the ocean, playing in the sand and of course taking lots of pictures to document almost every moment. We gathered 4 cameras at the end of 4 days and we had 290 pictures, can we say crazy?
My babe and I on the patio after a 13 hour adventure on Friday at Disneyland. It was a blast, and I will blog about that at another sitting. :)

Caeden's officially 5!

He had been looking forward to this day for months and as you can see the fact it arrived put a smile on his face! What an artistic cake too huh? :)
Here we are the am of his 5th birthday with his 5 balloons. :) It was an extra exciting morning too because he lost his first tooth the night before while eating a burrito at dinner. So we have a new grin for age 5 too! He really is growing up!
This sweet monkey was blessed with parties this year! Here we are at the Murphy family party, and once all the toys had been opened all 6 Murphy men had a toy in hand and were all trying them out, it was quite cute!
This was a little friend party Jay and I hosted in our backyard. We pretty much let Caeden choose what happened and it involved lots of eating, playing star wars and duck duck goose.

Well Caeden, we sure love you! You are surrounded by so many family members and friends that think you are super special! We have loved these first 5 years and are so excited that we will share in your days to come.