Our Family's Birthday

So, in 2014 I made a goal to have a family party each month. And I did it. I didn't do it the next year though, but I did still have a special dinner party for our anniversary. Having a big dinner party each month was a bit too much for me to handle long term, but I can do it once a year in February. Since it's our anniversary, it's like our family's birthday. At first I thought that this year's party was probably the most pathetic of them if we measure them by my contribution. But as I was just reviewing the past few years of February dinners ( 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016) I come to find out I didn't even do it last year or in 2017 (but I did make each of the kids Valentines in 2017, so there ya go). This year I have a good reason though for being a slacker - I'm playing the "I have a newborn" card. But I am going to really try to do better next year - atleast as good as it was in 2015. Like I said, this year I didn't have much energy to give to it, so I put Abi in charge. I did buy the food on Saturday and cook all of it. The kids did the rest. Abi made these lovely heart decorations for the window -

She set the table. Wesley made the name cards for the place settings.

Some of the kids dressed up, like we have in years past. Most of us didn't though. Natalie was one of the people that did.

We had a little table for her and her toddling brothers to sit at, which is a good thing to have when we are all trying to sit down to eat at the same time. Cause we can't all fit at our kitchen table...

Owen and Daniel didn't join us, cause they were taking their afternoon naps.

After I got the dinner on the table, I went to nurse my little valentine. He is beautiful.

I didn't provide an over the top selection of sugary desserts like I did in years past, now that I'm all health conscious and know that most of those things are bad for us. Well, I already knew junk food was bad in general, but I didn't know the extent of how bad all the animal products were back then. So, for our cancer causing/blood vessel clogging food (aren't I fun to be around?), I got a red velvet cake from Costco and some cranberry orange cookies. One reason why it's not good to have such tempting desserts is because then the little ones will not eat anything healthy. Daniel woke up from his nap and was left unsupervised in the kitchen. Everyone else was off doing whatever as they waited for the dinner to digest and so we hadn't served the cake yet. But it was out on a cake stand and ready to be eaten. Daniel discovered it waiting, so he helped himself.

He was very sweetly fingering off the frosting over and over again. He turned and saw me and said "Mmm! Dat yummy!"

Cute Daniel. There was still room for some un-toddler-contaminated slices on the far side of the cake, so Ethan will be able to have some. As for the rest of us, we got to share our frosting with Daniel. It was a nice dinner, I'll try to keep my promise to do better next year. (Abi doesn't mean to, but she really puts the expectations pressure on sometimes! It's all recorded here how great I did with these parties in years before and I can't live up to that anymore!)