Pure Sweetness: Sam turned 7!

Each child gets to get checked out of school by me for their birthday. We always go to a nice place for lunch and go see a movie, then we go look at presents. This year, Sam had forgotten what we do, so it was a huge surprise. I had the office ladies call him to the office, and he thought he was in trouble at first, but when I told him to go back to get his coat and backpack since we were out of there, he pumped his hand in the air while he was running down the hall and kept saying, "YES! My mom's checking me out!!!" So, I wanted to show him the indoor surfing place in Ogden, but it wasn't turned on. We ate at Costa Vida and then went to see "The Spy Next Door" -- since Jackie Chann is right up Sam's alley. This picture is of Sam showing me what Jackie Chann can do.

Chloe was OBSESSED with helping me get Sam's first birthday party ready (we average about 3 parties per birthday). She lives for baking - so the cake making was very important.

For Sam's friend party, we rented out the bowling alley for a couple of hours and he had like 15 friends come. It was noisy! Jake and Chloe REALLY got into it. I've never seen Jake get so excited! He was jumping and dancing around as soon as he'd push the bowling ball down the little ramp, and then he'd clap for himself and run back to the thing that the balls come back out of - tapping his little fingers while he'd wait for it. He had me laughing a lot - so there's a lot of pictures of him!

Even though Chloe looks sad, she's not - she was just concentrating. She had a lot of fun with it, too!

Jake got sick of waiting for me to help him carry the balls - so he just started bowling all on his own!

I know this picture looks like the ball's heading for a perfect strike, but it's actually stopped right there - totally NOT moving. Jake didn't roll it with enough power that time! He was pretty nervous for his ball!

Sam is such a goof-ball when he gets around his friends. I know why he can't gain any weight - he's so energetic and crazy ALL THE TIME!

Sometimes Sam's ball would go in the gutter. Darn.

The cutest thing - one of his friends gave him some balloons that had dollar bills in them. So, he had to pop them to get his presents, and it was a riot! Can you see the dollar bill flying through the air? (HINT -- it's down by his knee)

For his big family party, we had almost everyone there - 20 of us! We made Sam's favorite meal - barbeque shredded chicken in homemade rolls. We wanted to make him a skiing cake, but I couldn't find any skiing guys - so we went with the next best thing - football cakes! Colten, Sam and Chloe all helped out with trying to get those lines straight. Nice, huh?!?! I had to just stand back and let them finish decorating it!