Happy Birthday Samuel!!!

Samuel celebrated his 9th birthday Saturday, December 1st. Since both of our boys' birthdays are within 6 days of each other, we do not have big birthday bashes each year for both of them. This was Samuel's year to have a family birthday. I took cupcakes to his classroom on Friday and gave him a football he had been wanting. Joseph went shopping with me the day before, and he decided to share the football news before it was time. Samuel thought this was great--he said that Joseph was fun to have around. Somehow we started a tradition of putting streamers on the birthday kid's door before they get up. I made sure that Samuel's door was decorated Saturday morning. We gave Samuel another gift in the a.m.--a Mr. Potato Head Transformer. He enjoyed playing with this until it was time to load into the van to go to the parade. Because we were on the school float, he spent some of his birthday sweating and waving to people along the route. When we had said "Merry Christmas" a thousand times, we came back home and prepared to go to Chuck E. Cheese's for supper--this is how Samuel wanted to spend the rest of his birthday. We had a lot of fun eating pizza and playing games. We then came back home, had cake and ice cream, opened up his last gift (a nerf gun), and fell into bed. All of my kids are special, but Samuel was born the same month I lost my Dad. Every time I remember my loss, I also remember my gift from God in the form of a precious son.