Birthday Bash

Sat. Aug. 30th was Ryan's birthday party. All his friends came and most of his family were all here too. That is the equation for a house full. Thank goodness for the swimming pool, otherwise I would've had to plan games and activities. But with the pool I just tell them all to stay outside and the grown-ups can all (except for the life-guards) stay in the air conditioning and watch whatever they want on t.v. Works out perfectly.
Otherwise, this is what it looks like. And these 15 or so kids make enough noise that in less than 20 minutes I'm going crazy. They came in to watch Ryan open his presents and blow out candles and then they went back outside.
Ryan had so much fun. Thank you to everyone for the nice gifts. And thank you to everyone who helped me keep my sanity by organizing or decorating. Ryan got one of everything. He got Battleship, and Uno Attack, and Blendy Pens, and Disney Monopoly.
He got a bunch of money and lots of love. It was so great to have all my family here. Thanks to everyone for coming down, we had a nice visit. Here's a good picture of all of us.
It's almost perfect except Ryan has a red Gatorade moustache and you can only barely see my mom. It's about as close as we can come to a family portrait I guess.
For those of you who don't know, my sister is on the verge of starting her own cake making business. She is starting a blog, but it is not up and running yet. There is a link to it down below. She has been decorating cakes for people she knows for whatever occasion they are having. She has made all different shapes, round, square, a purse, a car, a butt (not a naked one - eww), a dog, a couple of wedding cakes, lots of different things. I especially like this cup-cake cake.

You can see them on walmart.com in our group photo room. Email me for details to get to that if you don't know. She has been mostly "giving" them away for almost nothing, but she is getting a great reputation and everyone loves the work she does. Anyways, she has been making the cakes for Ryan's birthdays the last few years. They were different because they were pan cakes, but still took a lot of work and patience.

Here's a picture from birthday #2.




Still very cute. This year she made Ryan this:

WOW! This is a Poke-Ball. "Gotta Catch 'em all! Gotta Catch 'em all!" Ryan really likes Poke-mon. Much to my Cha-grin. Val did such an awesome job with this cake. There was none left the next day for me to eat. The ball is cherry and the bottoms are chocolate with marbalized fondant. Great job, sis! Thanks.
Course, making cakes is only one of her talents, she also knits or crochets (I don't know if I understand the difference) or both. She made me a beautiful Carousel cross-stitch and she crocheted me a koala bear. Here are a couple of other things that she made:




It's a cross-stitch. The detail is amazing. Dad loves Monopoly.
And she made all the scarves you can see in this picture. Well, you can't seem them all but we all have one. (Mine was the best though - sorry everyone)










It is so hard to believe how fast these last 8 years went by. I can so vividly remember the day Ryan was born. Everyday he has taught me something. He is so special to me. I wish that he didn't have to get older so quick, especially these last few years. In two years Ryan has really matured and he has learned to ride his bike without training wheels, he was in his first Christmas play at school, learned to swim underwater and go off the diving board, he has learned to skate and play baseball with a team. He has learned a few of the Articles of Faith and loves to sing in Primary. And much more than I can think of right now. I could imagine him as a great man... but it makes me cry. I want my little Buggy back.
I always say - if I can only have one, at least I got a good one.