Celebrating 12 Years of Joy

We were blessed this year to have Ava actually with us on her birthday day. In addition to lunch out when her Mimi arrived, we also had a little family get together a couple days later.

Mom and I were so happy to be able to host it~making the most of our new backyard...the kids played outside, we all ate dinner out there, and later that evening Van showed off his baseball skills going one-on-one against his dad!

Mimi Lori got to Dante for the first time.

 Later, Dante was able to crawl around in the grass for the first time. He has really started getting around~and quickly at that!

Ava spent some quality time with each of her cousins since she was leaving to go home to CA in just a couple days...

Balloons!!!

Dante kept trying to catch a balloon and they kept bouncing away~much to his chagrin!

Mom made carnitas for dinner~our house smelled incredible for 2 days as she slow cooked the pork!

Gifts

We gave Ava funky socks and a couple packs of gum for her gift~she was cute 'cuz she was excited about them...but more so when we told her to check the insidesof the socks, where she discovered a necklace, bracelet, earrings, and a ring. But it was cute that she would have been happy with socks and gum!

Tiff, Mike, and Teagan gave her two of her favorite things: clothes and a gift card!! What girl doesn't like that?!



Tom, Shelah, and Van special ordered her clothing and other items from the local baseball team, the Aquasox: she went to a game with them and later declared the Aquasox  to be in her top 5 favorite teams list!

Are we sensing a them here? Money, clothes, and jewelry!

But the best part was the card that Van made to go with the gift: Shelah said he labored over it for hours and he was so proud of it! He was almost jumping out of his skin with excitement when she got to their gift!

How cute was Van? And Teagan's reaction was so cute!

While we were doing gifts, Teagan went inside by herself~we later learned what she was doing. I had told her we would do cupcakes after dinner and after gifts. The gifts being nearly done, she took it upon herself to go inside to fetch the cupcakes, which were (fortunately) still in a container. Of course, being shorter than the counter the cupcakes were stacked on, did make her task difficult...she was doing ok til she got caught and got flustered and dropped everything!

No worries! The cupcakes survived and candles were lit, song sung, wishes made, and flames blown out:

Yummy Fun!!!



Ava, my love, you have grown into a lovely young woman and I am so very blessed to know you and have you in my life.

I love you!

~Auntie M