Everett is 3 Today!

Happy Birthday Everett!!

Today we celebrated Everett's 3rd birthday at our house with some friends.  I made special cupcakes with pudding frosting and keeping with the theme of the SuperWhy (one of Ev's favorite cartoon shows), the kids made superhero masks.  They had a fun afternoon of playing and celebrating.

Everett was pretty shy about all the attention, but loved eating the cupcakes and playing with friends. 

Happy Birthday buddy!  He was pretty happy to have everyone over for his special day!

Everett had a lot of friends come over to eat lunch and help celebrate his 3rd birthday!

We tried to do the candles outside, but the wind was too strong.

Happy Birthday to you!  (He's slightly shy about everyone singing to him.)

Elliot had fun jumping on Ev's bed and playing with his friends.

He got a cool light up wrist band for his special day!

It flashed all different colors.

Later in the day we celebrated another birthday.  Our monarch caterpillar egg hatched!

 

Rain, Rain, Let's go Play!

The rain has been coming down, but our kids are excited to get out and play.  Today we put on our rain boots and hit the trails with some friends after our tour at IPTV.  It was a lot of fun and the kids were exhausted and soaked from all the running, mud, and puddle jumping.  I was glad to have the extra change of dry, warm clothing for everyone once we got back to the van, they were soaked from head to toe, but happy to have had the chance to be kids!

Right away all the kids ran to the mud.

We suggested they play in the clean water rather than the stinky mud.



Little Laila wasn't sure about it all.

 

"Look, we found a worm!"

 

 

Stuck in the mud.



Everett lost his balance and fell over in the mud.



It didn't slow him down.

 


Emma's mom caught a little frog.



Ethan took a dip.  (He was okay but soaked!)

 

 

Another little friend we found along the way.

 

Most of the crew



Our free spirits who didn't want to join in
on the group shot.

"Let's go hunting for a geocache."



Do you see it?

Found!

This geocache had tons of cool stuff!

 

There were some special coins in it too!

 

Happy kids in dry clothing, ready for the drive home after a fun day!

There is no BUDDY better than a BROTHER

Tonight, the boys requested that they share a bed.  After some time, Everett decided he wanted to get back into his bed to sleep.

I just checked on them before I went to bed and this is what I found...  Melts my heart!

"Are we at the beach yet?" says the child about every 30 miles

Everett has been asking, "Are we at the beach yet?" ever since we left Iowa... Poor guy had no idea we were going on such a long road trip!!

He couldn't believe it when Ethan told him that they were going to sleep in the car while we drove over night, and then, when we stopped at a rest stop to grab a few hours of sleep, we laughed at the surprised tone of his voice as Derrick and I grabbed our pillows, "Look Ethan, Mommy and Daddy are getting their pillows and SLEEPING in the car!!"

After spending over 28 hours on the road, we are finally in Florida!! We left Des Moines at 2:20pm on Friday afternoon, and arrived at Panama City Beach around 6:30pm on Saturday. Our little travelers did amazing and even though it was a little chilly when we arrived, our first stop was the beach!

I wish I could say Elliot was as excited as the rest of us.

We stayed on the beach and played until the sun went down. God blessed us with a beautiful sunset, and paired with the sound of our kids giggles, we knew this was the place to be.