Party with the Fam

How incredible was today?!?! Our today was awesome 😀 If you’ve somehow missed it, Dekker turned three whole years old yesterday, so we celebrated with my parents this evening. But first, I’ll do a quick recap of the rest of the day, and slightly before.

Last night, I got a call from the town inspector who we spoke to two years about building our deck. The guy was pretty unreasonable and just not our favorite person. Anyway, he called last night to ask if we ended up building our deck. I told him yes, to which he responded with a “Hmmm, I didn’t get a call to come inspect it…” He then informed me that he was going to drop by the next day to inspect it. I told him I wouldn’t be home, and he said that was fine. Unfortunately, I had no plans to be gone. So I called my mom and asked if I could come be at her place in order to totally avoid the inspector. She said yes. Yay!

So first thing in the morning, I fed the kids and packed the diaper bag, and took them over to my moms in their sweats/jammies. It was a bit cool today, so that was perfect. We had a great morning playing with grandma, and she even made Dekker a lunch of his favorite things: grilled cheese sandwiches and french fries. After we ate, we all headed back to my house, as we had planned a family birthday party in the evening.

The kids napped at a relatively normal time, and mom and I did the dishes and tidied up the dining room. Then we went outside and played in the garden a bit. We dug up the first carrots of the summer, which were still a big small but completely delicious! We brought in a bunch for supper. We saved the rest of the harvesting for the evening when the boys would be around.

Once everyone had arrived home for the evening, we cracked out the food and began the painfully easy process of preparing a supper that we knew Dekker would absolutely love. Mac and cheese. I’m not even kidding. With Deks not really wanting to sit at the table through meals, I knew he’d sit for macaroni. So we made that, as well as some yummy battered fish, and the garden carrots. Right before everything was ready, I remembered that weeks ago, Dekker had made one simple request for his birthday dinner. “Detter wants juice, please.” So juice he should have! I made a pitcher of powdered iced tea, since I had forgotten about it and hadn’t planned anything fancier. But I can assure you all, my Dekker Thomas LOVED his supper! He had two helpings of macaroni, ate most of his fish, and probably ate more carrots before supper than during, but it still counts. Two or three cups of juice down, too. He was so happy 🙂 It made me happy.

He loved his cake too, and did a great job of blowing out his candles too. He ate most of his piece of cake (all the parts with icing) and then was off to play toys. We gave him his gifts next. The big hit was the basketball hoop from Grandma and Grandpa. We set it up and he played and played and played for a solid 45 minutes. And guys, he is surprisingly good! He got a lot of practice in at Caity and Stef’s in Winnipeg, and it shows. He got lots of baskets, and we all celebrated each one. Literally, we all sat and watched him play the entire time. I’ll do a photo post tomorrow when I’m more organized 🙂 But seriously, he was sooo happy! In the years past, he would cry if too much attention was on him, but he had an absolute riot today.

Bedtime was really, really sad. Poor Dekker didn’t want today to end. But we did our best to have tons of tickles and laughing and running and bouncing along the way. When it was finally time, he prayed with Brady, and went down well. Us adults went outside to check the rest of the garden afterwards and were met with beautiful results. We dug up one potato plant and found 17 potatoes!!!!! The corn is still a week or two away, but its about 8′ tall, so its looking incredible. Also, tomorrow, my mom and I are pickling, and we found 7 really tall shoots (chutes?) of volunteer dill, so at least something in our pickles will come from our garden, even if its not the cucumbers. We pulled out the bean plants that are finished for the year, and made some plans to weed out the carrots to give them a bit more space to get a bit bigger. The garden looks pretty awesome. We’re excited for it to keep doing its thing and then to be able to eat from it!

My parents left after the garden dig, and we went back inside to check on the kids. That was a while ago. They’ve been down for over an hour, and it would appear neither is tired enough for bed. Laela is shuffling all around her crib, wreaking havoc and tearing the ties off of her bumper pads (thanks, girly) and Dekker will not stop talking!!! Basketball, puppies, cake, trucks, grandma and grandpa, and the list keeps going. I keep thinking “We should go in there and shut that down.” and maybe we will try again soon. But I LOVE that they’re both still so revved up on the day that they can’t sleep! Its adorable. They are adorable.

What an incredible day today has been 🙂 I hope all birthdays are like this one. Happy birthday party, Dekker.