Celebration!!

This year, Brooke & Briana decided to combine their birthday parties in to one big party.  The majority of their friends are siblings and it worked out wonderfully to just have a joint party.  They decided to have a party at GymStar this year and we had a terrific party.  The owner/party host is terrific.  The gym is fantastic.  The kids got plenty of free play time and were free to play on any of the equipment in the gym (balance beams, trampoline, bars, pommel horse, obstacle course and lots of room to run around) and there was fun parachute time, games, bubbles, rock climbing and hoola hoops. 

Jake & Brooke give the rock climbing wall a try:

Briana on the long trampoline

A picture I couldn't resist including

All the party goers - we are truly blessed by the friends and family we have

A fun game the party host used to identify the birthday girls.  I must say, he is a brave man.  He had all the kids put their feet up in the air and then he went down the row smelling feet until he identified the "sweet smelling" birthday girls' feet.  These blue jeaned bottoms and pairs of feet belong to Brooke, Briana and Rabeka.

Trying to determine how old the birthday girls were.  This guy was so funny - the kids were all laughing at him and yelling out "7" and "4" and he would move the girls around, say Brooke was 4 and Briana was 7 or that they were 74 or 47.

 Thanking their friends for attending their party

 Briana's turn to thank her friends.

 Some fun parachute time.

 Yes, no party is complete until the big kids get in on the action.  This trip down the trampoline didn't end gracefully.  HI-LA-RIOUS.

 This trip down the trampoline, however, did end gracefully

Briana blowing out the birthday candles

 Brooke blowing out her birthday candles

 Seriously blessed

Brooke & Briana were super excited because this year Aunt Jenny, Uncle Matt Matt, Peanut & Bubba came in for their party.  So many of our family came to the girls' party and we were able to have a terrific birthday dinner afterwards taking up one giant table and 2 regular sized tables in the restaurant (I think we had 30 family members at dinner)

Thanks a million to a terrific birthday party from Gymstar, to all our wonderful friends and to our fabulous family for making 7 and 4 unforgettable

This year, instead of asking for presents, the girls asked each of their friends to bring a new, unwrapped teddy bear to the party .  They wanted to donate the bears to our local fire department so they could take them out on ambulance and fire calls to comfort the kids they helped.  We were so overwhelmed by the generosity of our family and friends that we not only took 25 bears to the fire department, we also took 25 bears to our local hospital for them to give to children in the hospital.  The girls made their delivery to the fire department.

 The firemen were very thankful for the generosity of the girls and especially enthralled with a couple of puppets our friend Roman donated (a fire woman and a police man).  {Briana was feeling a bit shy and opted out of this picture - at the taking of this picture, she had her arms firmly wrapped around my leg and was peeking out from behind me}