Katie’s Birthday Weekend

Katie’s birthday may have been almost a week ago but the partying hasn’t stopped. Dad, Janet, Jen, Ryan, Piper and Anna all came to stay the weekend and go to the birthday party. I rented a water slide and they played on it for hours Friday night. 

We all sat outside and watched while Matt grilled chicken, shrimp, squash and zucchini. And we had that with creamed corn, twice baked potatoes and homemade dinner rolls that night. I wish I would have gotten a pic of that plate because it was delish! It was our first time to host a crowd in this house, and it really worked out well. Everyone had a bed and enough space to where I didn’t feel like the house got destroyed either. Other than that zillion loads of towels I had to wash, it didn’t take much to clean up after they left. A place to entertain is what we always wanted ❤️

Saturday was the party and she wanted a tiger theme. Not LSU, not jungle animal, tiger specifically. So it took a little bit of creativity (and Pinterest 😉) on my part but I think it turned out cute! 

We had sandwich trays and cupcakes from Kroger, Jimmy sent a large tray of Chick-fil-A nuggets, and I came up with the theme food mostly from Pinterest. I thought I had a ton of food but with 14 kids and 16 adults we ate almost all of it! Which is great because I didn’t want leftovers. 

All of the setup was cute and made KJ happy, but of course all the other kids cared about was the fun! They played in the pool and water slide and even a little bit of rain didn’t stop people from being here over 3 hours. 

Other than the hour I made the 4 girls come in before the party so they were dry the greet guests and for graduation, they were outside playing from 8:30 AM to 5:30 PM. To say they were exhausted is an understatement but they had too much fun. I’ll have to rent this again when Piper and Anna come for “cousin camp” this summer. 

And speaking of the graduation, that was cute too. I decided to do a little something for Lilli before the party while friends and family were here to mark the end of elementary school.  She would be graduating if she was in “real school” so I didn’t want to let the milestone pass with no acknowledgement. She may have been embarrassed but all of her friends thought it was pretty cool and I kept it short and sweet. I said a couple of words thanking her for adjusting to homeschool with (almost) no complaints. I know she didn’t have a choice, but we wanted to thank her for that sacrifice for our family when we know she would have rather been at school. I gave her a diploma, a trophy and her yearbook, and then we all watched a slideshow of pics of her 6 years of school. And we passed around a stuff dog with a graduation cap for everyone to sign. It was cute and I don’t think she hated it as much as she thought she would. 😉

It was a great weekend celebrating both our girls! ❤️