Sam's birthday festivities

The Chicago post was so epic that it's taken me a while to get back in the blogging groove. We'll start with the biggest news of late - Sam turned six! His birthday was on Sunday, but the party started much earlier. Thursday, a friend from church had a party at a new trampoline park place in town. I'm glad that he and Sam have birthdays close together so hopefully this kid does something cool every year and I won't have to.

Friday they celebrated at school by singing to him and giving him this hat. He also go to be the teacher's special helper for the day.

Friday night was the church Fathers and Sons campout. Sam was super excited to go. I asked Dan to send me pictures. Here are the two he sent.

From what I've been told, Friday night they set up and then played with footballs and soccer balls. They has roasted 'smores and looked at the stars. Sam didn't go to bed until 11! Saturday morning, Dan was in charge of the breakfast and then after that they played tug-of-war and had an egg toss. Sam and Dan came in fourth out of 25 teams. I was impressed. They had a lot of fun.

Sunday Mom and Dad came over from Charlottesville and went to church with us, which was nice. Mom helped me in my primary class. They sang to Sam in church and his teacher gave him a mug full of candy. After church we had lunch, then quiet time, then for dinner we made our own personal pizzas, opened presents, and had cake and ice cream. We were celebrating my dad's birthday, too, since it was just five days before. This year, Sam requested a simple double layer chocolate cake with chocolate frosting.

Birthday boys.

 

 Sam received switch-n-go dinos, magic tree house books, a maze book and a dinosaur book from G&G Cheney; a check to pick out a toy from G&G Durst; Jenga, legos, a hat, and a water gun from us. Dan is also in the process of building Sam a playset completely from scratch. I think I'll do a separate post for that. I'm amazed at what Dan can just come up with.

We love Sam so much and are so grateful that he came to our family. I don't know how I got so lucky to be his mom. He knows wrong from right and tries so hard to be good. He is a good friend and great big brother. He has so much faith. He loves to play angry birds and fruit ninja on Dan's phone for a few minutes every morning. He likes to play with his switch-no-go dinos and he really likes Magic Tree House books. (Good thing there's 50 of them!) He likes to watch old school Transformers on netflix, as well as some random Godzilla cartoon and Wild Kratts. When he grows up, he says he wants to be a missionary.