We are a family of winter birthdays. Daddy, Clay, Abigail and Elisabeth all have birthdays within about a month of each other. Mama and Daddy’s anniversary is in there too.
So this year, instead of doing separate parties, we had one big hurrah. I took a camera, so here are some of our many pictures.
Daddy’s birthday starts things off.
 He and Mama got married five days later. Somehow I lost a year. They’ve been married thirty seven years, but I kept thinking it was thirty six.
I got mixed up with Clay’s birthday too. I thought he was twenty nine this year. He’s not. He’s the big 3-0. I think Clay is adopted. He doesn’t eat chocolate all that much, so we have carrot cake on his birthdays. My mom makes a mean carrot cake, but what Hall doesn’t like chocolate?
Abigail is five this year. It is very very hard for all of us to believe how grown up she is becoming. She is showing maturity in speech, in attitude and in academics. She likes to read and write and brought some of her textbooks for us to peruse. She’s also into gymnastics. I’ve seen pictures and can’t believe how much like a little lady she looks in her uniforms. Abigail is also becoming a master of accents. She loves to play “Peter Pan” and pretend to be Wendy in the nursery.
Baby Elisabeth is one. She’s not talking much yet, but she does like to walk around. She’s not too fond of being in her high chair past the point of dinner being over, but she’s really a sweet tempered girl. I don’t remember if Abigail or Catherine sucked their thumbs, but Elisabeth does. If she carried around a blankie, she’d be just like her daddy as a child.
Catherine is our summer birthday baby. She’s two and a half now and very self assured. She liked to dictate what pictures I took of her, so here is one she picked out of her playing with wooden dolls. (They are the new paper dolls–girls made out of wood or plastic with multiple changes of clothes.)
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My sister in law introduced us to board games and such at our family gatherings, so we played a couple of things.Â
 
 The first was “Would You Rather?”, a game that Monica picked out for me, but that she really wanted to play herself. It had questions like “Would you rather not change your socks for a year or your underwear for a year?” It also had challenges. Kenny had to lap a drink like a cat for a certain amount of time. He says he’s going to post the video on his blog, so if you see him and it’s not up, be sure and razz him about it 🙂
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So that is us: Steve, Claudia, Clay, Monica, Abigail, Catherine, Elisabeth, (and new baby), Ken and Stephanie. We’re not large as some families go, but we sure have fun.
Just wait. Summer’s coming and Catherine will be turning three. I wonder what we’ll make Kenny do then?