December 12, 2015-Happy Birthday (party) Anderson!

Celebrating #9!

(click here for today's pictures)

• The girls were awake when the clock was still at 5 this morning but luckily for us, they were sleeping at Grannymom's house.  And just to clarify, "the girls" that I am speaking of is Campbell and Keaton.  I guess that I have taken to calling Campbell and Keaton as "the girls" and this has started to bother my big girl, Reagan.  I am very much aware that she is a girl so I guess I probably should change my "the girls" to my "little girls."
• Anyways, back at our house we all slept for a bit longer than "the little girls" but as soon as the boy woke up they were ready to get started on this day.  It didn't take too long for us to all get out of bed and after handing Whitman some cereal and milk, I quietly tiptoed out of the door to start helping Robby in the yard.
• We were able to rake the front yard and roll a pine tree (well, pieces of a pine tree) down the hill and into the woods.  The boys helped us some (when asked) but Reagan stayed inside with Whitman.  She kept him busy and happy so her not helping outside was fine with me.
• The weather did throw us a few times and even started sprinkling.  But we pressed on and by lunch time the tailgate was set up outside, we were all showered and ready for the party.  We were actually all outside just sitting down when Jason arrived first.  Then our guests started pouring in-Grannymom, Grandpa, Lilli, Nonna, Pops, the Penningtons, the McFarlands, the Nelsons, the Powells, the Kamps, Dana and Cash.  Seriously, we had a full house-or a few yard!
• This was Anderson's 9th birthday party and he chose to have a football tailgate party.  We had a tailgate tent set up along with a few Razorback flags.  The music from the Razorback band was playing and the Army/Navy football game was on.  All of our footballs were aired up and the first thing that the kids did was start playing-they played on the swings, they played football, they played basketball and some even played in the dirt.  We had a bingo game to play with everyone but it just seemed like they were all having so much fun playing that we didn't want to disturb them.
• Before we ate, we took a group picture and there were 18 kids there (Cash came a few minutes later-so 19 total kids).  Robby had grilled hot dogs so we had those, sausage, chips and salsa, potato chips and football shaped pretzels.  After eating, the kids all disappeared to go and play again.
• We did wrangle them back for dessert-football cakes which we devoured and then a few minutes later it was present time.  One guess what Anderson got-legos! Plus a ping pong table set, books, a remote control car, puzzles and nerf gun bullets.  The boy racked up and right before Christmas.  
• Everyone stayed for a while and then when they left, Jason helped us pick up.  Keaton left with the Kamps to go and look around at Toys R Us and the other Kamps kids stayed here and played.  After Robby and I had finished cleaning up downstairs, we sat down and I said "would you believe that there are 7 kids here?"  It was surprisingly quiet. and I did go to check and they were all happily playing.  
• We had a quick bite to eat and finished our day of birthday celebrations at Krispy Kreme.  We all sang to Anderson, who had asked us to sing quietly (we didn't!)  Then we picked Keaton and ran a few errands on the way home.
• Once at home, it was again shower time but tonight we even had time for our Bible reading, time to talk about our Christmas ornament and time to countdown before Christmas.