Happy Birthday Nicholas!

New Mongoose HoopD Bike

This past Saturday was Nicholas's REAL 8th birthday!  Happy Birthday Nick!  Now he can legally ride in a car without the booster seat!  We secretly have been doing that for at least 6 months, but is worth mentioning every significant milestone!

Nana, Jeff, Aunt Carolyn and the dogs came to help us celebrate on Friday evening.  Both kids were delighted to see them and receive their WVU gifts! That evening we had a nice steak dinner at home and relaxed.

And then Saturday...our feet hit the ground running!  Nick woke up to a room full of balloons, and his favorite breakfast:  Sausage gravy over pancakes!  (Note:  Can you see his lip bumper courtesy of the Orthodontist office last week?!)

 

Before breakfast was served, Ryan left to run the Festival of Leaves 5K in Front Royal.  Go RYAN!  I am so proud of him for running the race!  He was sore after, but did a great job! 

 

As soon as the Birthday breakfast was over, we ran out the door and dropped Mom, Jeff, and Nick at football at 8:30.  Then Carolyn, Lauren and I ran over to the parade start for the Festival of Leaves.  Lauren needed to be gathered with her gymnastics crew at 9 am in prep for the 10 am parade.  It was a bit chaotic and a very balmy 35 degrees, but I successfully got Carolyn and Lauren at their 'float'.  Then I ran back over to catch the end of Nick's football game.  He played amazing!  Great throws, and a great touchdown to boot!  The Bears won again  33-6!

 

With Ryan in tow, we caravaned our way back to the parade start to find Nick's baseball team...only to find it had already started!  Doh!!  Nick and I sprinted thru a few blocks of Front Royal and found the Able Forces truck with plenty of parade time to spare.  

 

And then we found Aunt Carolyn and Lauren.  They may have been cold, but they sure did enjoy themselves!



 

The parade ended, and we all went over to the food/craft booths on Main Street Front Royal for the Fall Festival of Leaves.  We saw some familiar faces from preschool, daycare, football, baseball, gymnastics, and more!  The temperatures warmed up and I bought my first Christmas present of the year!  Wahoo!

 

At 3:30 pm WVU kicked off one of the most humiliating defeats ever.  It. Hurt. Badly.  That's all I'm going to say about that...except I hope our defense shows up to the field this coming Saturday.

 

The rest of Nick's birthday was filled with Nick riding his brand new Mongoos HoopD bike, throwing football, playing baseball, enjoyed the beautiful fall day, running with Sam and Sarah dogs, and bumping some sand volleyball.  Nick received many birthday phone calls that were graciously appreciated.  We gobbled up some yummy crockpot BBQ sandwiches, cole slaw, and baked beans for dinner and called it a night!

 

Sunday morning Jeff fixed us up some French toast before they headed back to Wild Wonderful West Virginia.  The kids and I made it to church, then home to an afternoon of football watching, football passing, hanging with some friends.

 

Stay tuned for some fun facts about Nicholas at 8 years old in my next post! 

 

We are so blessed in so many ways.