10th Birthday Bash

After long last, we stayed in town for Carson and Jackson's birthday. With a birthday falling around the 4th of July weekend, it is hard to not be gone for the holiday. But with the Rowley reunion the week before and Girls Camp the week after, we needed an excuse to stay home! So I decided to send out an email and a text to some friends, inviting them to the party/bbq, thinking that a few would want to come if they were around. We rented this super big water slide to keep the kids cool and we hauled the dunk tank over from the Elks Lodge up the road. The kids had an absolute blast! My brother Adam and his family of 8 were staying the week and LeaAnn and her three kids were also here a few days.  So the water slide fun started for all the cousins at 9am and went until 8pm. Lets just say that it is fortunate we have a well and didn't have to pay for all that water that ran ALL DAY!  

Here are the birthday boys, with Carson shirtless. Can you believe they are 10 years old??? They are still pretty small and skinny. But they are the best kids and I love them so much! I wouldn't mind if they just stayed this age forever!

I tried counting how many people came and it turned out to be around 80 guests. Old friends came that I didn't expect to make it and it was so fun to see them. I didn't really get to "hang out" as much as I would have liked, since feeding that size of a group is a bit of work!

Here is my dear Chad on the dunk tank. Now he wasn't too thrilled that I wanted to get this brought over. He had helped haul it for the Fall Festival to the school and it is a large and heavy piece of metal. But I insisted and so he and a couple of my brothers and a friend went and got it. I thought it was worth it, since the kids played endlessly on it throughout the day. But when the time came to load it up and return it, Chad got his finger smashed and his WHOLE entire fingernail was pulled off! It is still too upsetting to think about! I feel so terribly bad about it all and wish I had not got that dumb dunk tank! His fingernail is going to take forever to heal! So now I would say it was not worth all the trouble.

My friend Sarah was so great to take pictures while I ran around. She had a tough time pinning down Jackson, but this is Carson anyway.

Please can I have a cupcake?

Here are the girlfriends who made it to the party. I forced them to gather and take a picture so I could put it on my blog. Please, Carrie, make yourself comfortable!