Happy 7th Birthday My Babies!

On Saturday my pumpkin s celebrated their 7th birthday.  I wanted to celebrate their birthday in a big way this year.  At least that was my intent.  Life has another way of working things out though.

I ordered a bouncy house for the children this year as a  surprise.  I had ordered the bouncy house right before Joseph broke his clavicle.  I thought I would be okay because his shoulder should heal right before their birthday.  Then, of course, poor Joseph falls again and hurts his should more on Thanksgiving Day but I was still holding out hope he would be okay for his birthday.

Two weeks before their birthday I placed an open invitation to people to attend the children;s birthday party.  This is a HUGE deal for me since I am always worried about Joseph catching some sort of respiratory illness and getting extremely ill.  I wanted the children to have a birthday they would remember this year.

I had several people tell me that they would come over.  The day before there was talk of a lot of rain.  I cancelled the bouncy house.  I reminded people online about the party the next day.  I was planning to make homemade play dough and we made two cakes to make sure we would have enough.  We made a chocolate cake for the children.  It was what they requested.  We also make a spice cake to make sure plenty of cake was on hand.

I started to get people saying they would not be able to come.  They had plans that changed, their kids were sick (which I did appreciate they did not come over!), and some never got back to me.  On the day of their birthday no one showed up.  We had the respite worker come over.  She brought her son.  They has a nice time playing with her son.  John and I decided to leave and head to a Goodwill across town where they are suppose to have nice clothes.

We took off and one of the moms asked about coming over but we had left the house all ready.  We ran into a HUGE storm heading to the Goodwill.  While there we found clothes to be on sale.  They did have nice clothes.  Not much in the way of pants but I found shirts for James, shirts, leggings and dresses for Margaret and Joseph did not really need anything since he wears James's hand-me-downs.  We also got some board games and books.  We used the clothes, books, and games as a new tradition this year.  Normally they get stuff for wither their birthday or Christmas since they are so close together.  This year we decided to give them each a small present every night between their birthday to Christmas.  They either got some clothes, a book or a game.  The kids are loving the new tradition of our version of the 12 days of Christmas!