Happy Birthday Daddy!

We decided to throw Jared a 'surprise' party this year, Melody's idea! She was a huge helper getting everything together. She helped decorate the cake, which was much more fun than I thought it would be! She helped keep her sister entertained while we picked out presents, I waited until the day of because Mellie has a big mouth :) And she helped make the decorations. I have this problem that I would much rather make it than buy it. I just hate to waste the money if I don't need to, so with that we mixed a few projects and came up with these flowers.

We took coffee filters and colored them with crayola markers then sprayed them with water to mix the colors. It ended up having a water color affect. Very cool. Then I took a bunch and cut them into random sized circles, Melody balled them up and smoothed them back out. Then she wound up the pipe cleaners for me and we stuck them through. I think the thing I liked best about this project is Melody was able to do almost all of it on her own. I just sat back and let her work. She's very studious when she has something to concentrate on, the trick is finding things that she thinks are interesting.

After we finished those I gave the kids the streamers, tape and flowers and sent them to work. I should've taken pictures, but I forgot. They did fantastic work! Melody had the streamers wound through every chair a million times. It's a good thing they're just made of paper!

When Jared got home I informed him he was to take a very long shower (he rides his bike home) since we were no where near ready. Melody was very funny the whole time he was showering. She kept running around whisper-yelling hurry up hurry up! Dad's gonna be here any minute! When we were finally ready she and Katie hid behind the couch while I went to get dad. He did a great job pretending he didn't see any decorations while he waited for the kids to jump out and surprise him. Unfortunately they got tangled in the blanket they were hiding in so it took a minute! We were both trying not to laugh. When they finally freed themselves Melody started yelling 'surprise daddy, surprise! Happy birthday!!' Katie trailed along behind her attempting to say the same thing, at least I think that's what she was doing. She's still in the indecipherable phase.

Melody and Katelynn got him the typical daddy presents a tie and a wallet. Can I just say that the stuff you can find at Marshals is incredible considering how inexpensive it is! After dinner Melody helped me light the candles, which was a feat in itself, I made the mistake of actually putting 26 candles on there! Half of them were almost burned out by the time I got the last one lit! We all sang happy birthday, Katie even did a pretty good job. She kept saying 'happy birday daddy' over and over lol! Then of course the kids got to blow out the candles!

I think birthday's take on a whole new meaning once you have kids. You no longer open your own presents, blow out your own candles or have any say over what you get to do. I've seen a few birthday videos of Jared when he was younger so lets just say that him accepting this is a huge accomplishment on his part! Love you honey!!

We told Katie to lick off the frosting and she took it a bit too far! She ate the candle! At least she spit it out when we asked her to!

They had both been asking me ALL DAY if they could have a piece of cake. They thought I was the meanest because I kept telling them no!

Doesn't he look so happy? 

Yep. That's the man I married!