Carys's Five Day Birthday

One of the blessings of having so many kids is that they can adapt to almost any situation because well, that's kind of what our life is like. With 5 kids there is a lot of adapting. Carys had some adapting to do on her birthday a couple of weeks ago. She had a hard time getting to celebrate her birthday on just one day because of different things that kept happening and so she literally received presents and celebrated her birthday for 5 straight days. How good can a birthday be?

This is Carys the day before her birthday.

Note the swelling and redness under the left eye. She had to miss school because we had to take her to the emergency room and they then sent us across town to an eye specialist. Her eye was slowly shutting and all the redness and swelling was going down her face. The E.R. MD said it couldn't get any worse and that's why we had to see an eye MD. It was diagnosed as an abscess of the eyelid. The doctor prescribed some medicine and asked us to go see our pediatrician in the afternoon. Thankfully we have a good relationship with our pediatrician and she told us over the phone what kind of medicine to get Carys. Carys was very anxious. Not because she spent 4 hours in doctor's offices but because she had a big party in a local park the next day. She was really sad thinking about having to cancel her party. The Blume family day at the hospital also messed up some parents' plans to go out and buy the birthday girl some presents. We would try to do that after the party tomorrow.

Day 1

Thankfully God answered our prayers and her eye was much better on the following day and so you know what that meant.........PARTY!!! But first we had to celebrate with a good breakfast. Ansley likes to cook and she wanted to make something special for Carys's birthday. Carys was so excited about it that she woke Ansley up at 5:00 to tell her it was time to begin cooking. Ansley wasn't too thrilled but she got up and made Carys some muffins. This is both of them just as Carys is about to give Ansley a "thank you for the muffins smack" on the back of the head as you can see by her hand in the ready position. If I'd taken this 3 seconds later you would have seen a fight.

Then it was PARTY time! Here she is waiting to welcome party guests. She had her party at a big park near our house and this is one of the 9-10 entrances to this huge park. Carys and her classmate Aaron have birthdays just a few days apart and so they decided to have a birthday party together and invite all their classmates. Aaron and his family are also part of the church family that meets at our house and so we also had kids from the house church as well who came to the party. These are the cookie cakes that Benay and Jennifer (our teammate) made for Carys and Aaron. The bottom cake means congratulations. At the party the kids played games............bobbed for apples..........enjoyed cake.....(this is Aaron giving the thumbs up).....had a water balloon fight..........and, of course, opened presents.This is Carys with all her best buddies. We weren't able to go shopping after her party because Carys HAD to go to see our favorite soccer team play that night. She even invited two of Bronwyn's best friends to go with us because she really likes Bronwyn's friends. These guys HATE our favorite team (think Yankee fan going to Fenway Park and wearing a Red Sox jersey x10 and you get the picture of what these guys did for Carys) but agreed to go and even allowed us to dress them up in our team's colors for the game.
Here is our group heading out to the game:I'm sure you are wondering "Where is Carys?" About 1 minute before this picture was taken of us leaving the house for the game, she informed us that she was too tired to go. We still went anyway and had a great time.

Day 2

The church family that meets in our house and some other families from other house churches took the church on the road as we went to the waterfalls on the Sunday after Carys's birthday. She had fun and was given one more present. She understood why we couldn't shop on this day either and why she needed to wait one more day to get her family presents. She wasn't happy about it but she understood.

Day 3

Benay went birthday shopping with the kids, to buy some presents for Carys, and Garrett bought his present and was able to give it to her that day. It's this cute little puppy. She really liked it. Unfortunately, after Garrett bought his gift, Benay had an unfortnate run-in with a tall man in the mall, so the gift-buying would have to be suspended for another day.

Day 4

We couldn't have the family party today because we had to go to the hospital (twice) with Bronwyn to have some tests done. She's fine but for some reason she didn't want me taking pictures of her during her visit. Shopping would be put off for another day.

Day 5

We would not be denied today and we made a promise to Carys that today we would have her family birthday after school. Benay and I made the mad scramble in the morning (kids only go to school for half a day in Brasil) to get her gifts. This is Carys getting ready to eat her lunch on the "You are Special, Especially today" plate that's used for family special days.

This is our lunch of, Carys's choice, hamburgers and french fries. Notice the left side of the table and how hard it is to get everyone to "just smile."Then it was time for more presents. This is Carys getting her new soccer shoes. She goes to soccer school two times a week and loves it. This is Carys getting ready to blow out her birthday cake. On their birthdays the kids get to pick any kind of cake they want. The favorite is usually "Mammy's chocolate cake." Mammy is my grandmother and she has been making this cake for years.The only problem with it is that it causes severe cake addiction and makes you want to do crazy things. You've heard people say that something is "to die for?" Well, in the case of Mammy's chocolate cake it's true. We finally got to celebrate Carys's birthday as a family and it only took us 5 days. No better way to top off days of celebration than to hunt for lizards in the front yard with your little brother on a stomach full of chocolate cake!