January Birthdays & The Ice Storm

'Tis the season for winter birthdays at our house. Vince turned 13 (!?!?) on the 17th and Papa was here for that celebration. For his bday gift, we got him a new seat for his unicycle. It originally came with a regular bicycle seat, and after many hours of practice, we decided a real unicycle seat would help his efforts out. It has and he is now working on being able to juggle while riding his uncicyle!

As part of the birthday tradition at our house goes, the birthday person gets to select the three meals for that day. For Vince's lunch, he chose to get peanut butter/dark chocolate for sandwiches. He loves peanut butter and they sell this natural peanut butter mixed with dark chocolate at the store. He had been wanting that for so long! For dinner, he chose his all-time favorite homemade potato soup. Fortunately, it turned out better than ever this time! (Sorry-no pictures of any of that-my camera battery was dead and I couldn't find the charger!)

Yesterday, the 27th, Gabie (my baby!) turned 3! Ahhh! No more blinking! We started off his bday morning with homemade sticky buns. Mom made homemade bread dough the day before and we rolled brown sugar and cinnamon in them and made a powdered sugar icing on top. Way better (and healthier) than Pillsbury! Lunch was Annie's natural mac-n-cheese, which Gabie was super excited about; but dinner had him more anxious than ever. Gabie's favorite dinner is Mom's homemade pot pies. Back in the kitchen, mom!

Gabie was having a really hard time waiting for it to finish baking!

But it always seems to be worth the wait. Out of two whole pies, we polished off all but one piece! While Vince chose chocolate-chip coffee cake for his birthday cake, Gabie just wanted straight-up chocolate cake with chocolate frosting!
Look at those three little candles!
He couldn't seem to blow out the candles by himself! Gabie has been really into baseball and football lately, so we got him a "real" football for his birthday. He used to say "feetball," but now he says "football." (I was kind of bummed out cuz I liked it the other way!)

He even had to take it bed with him for naptime and bedtime. Each time, he asked for it right away after waking up. Papa says he's going to be a "jock."

Some of you have heard about the ice storm we got, so I wanted to post some pictures of that too. It was nothing like the Nov. '07 ice storm and it's all melting today, but there were many car accidents and power outages across Oklahoma. Here's some pictures: (The back of our house with all the icicles hanging down.)

We were really thankful to have our electricity so we could enjoy warm meals on Gabie's birthday! Thank you Lord for the special little moments in our lives and the special little people!