Happy birthday Katie

Today was Katie's 8th birthday and we had a busy weekend.  On Saturday we had a bonfire, so I told the girls that I needed help to put up the canopy.  There was a chance of rain and wanted to be on the safe side.  So I brought the bin out and they got the poles out.  When I was getting ready to start setting it up.  Monika informed me that the 3 of them knew how to do it. And I was told to go do something else.

 Them working on the peak of the canopy, they knew exactly how to put it together ( they have helped the last couple of times I have put it up).

 Putting the roof on, I didn't help them at all with the peak or putting the roof on.

 Attaching the roof to the poles.  After this, they came and got Erin and I.  We then put the poles up to raise the canopy (hence no pictures being taken as I was busy putting it up)  I am proud of my girls and how well they did it.  The canopy is a 16x20 feet, so it is big.  It came handy both Saturday and today for shade.  We had a great bonfire and it started to downpour rain after we were finished...perfect timing.  Praise the Lord

 Monika will be turning 9 on Friday.  We do Katie and Monika's birthday party (family only) at the same day.  This year they both requested for Pokemen.  They are into it big time.  I couldn't find any Pokemen things for the cake, so I used some of their cards, put them in a protective sleeve and decorated the cake.  I always make their birthday cake and then let them decide how to decorate it.

 The girls waiting patiently to start opening gifts.

 My Neice Cassie is taking after her Grandma and Mom in quilting.  She made these 2 quilts, Katie's was the first one she ever made and Monika's was the 2nd.  She did an awesome job on them

 Everyone knew that the girls were in pokemen, so they got a lot of pokemen cards and my neice's boyfriend gave them each 500 cards of pokemen that he had, they were so excited.   Every time they opened a gift and it was related to pokemen they screamed, they also got excited over the gift cards to target that is going towards the DS systems they are saving for.  They got a couple of cute outfits too and then the bikes from us.  Their grandma (Dave's mom) gave them the pink box you see in the picture.  When you open that box there was another inside of it, I think there was around 10 boxes and they ended up with a little note saying see grandma.  They when over there gave grandma a big hug and were still laughing about having to open that many boxes.  They thought that is all grandma gave them, and they were just as happy for that present.  They found out later that grandma had money for them which was a bonus.  I thought it was pretty cool what she did and that the girls were happy with 10 boxes within each other.

 Blowingout the candles on their cake, Monika had a little bit of a hard time getting her's out

 Monika still working on her candles, Katie got hers out without any problems

 When cake was finished, played a water balloon game.  Erin ended up winning in that game.  Dave was being a pest and kept spray water at them during the game, the kids all of sudden grab the remaining waterballons and went after him, then after that a water war broke out among the kids.  Great way to cool off.

 I pulled out the waterslide.  The above picture is Monika, I am not sure what her expression means.

 Monike trying to stop and not go off the water slide

Katie doing it.

Jenn saying I can show off too.  The 5 younger kids had a blast with it and even blew up the bowling pins that came with it and they had fun catching those.
What a perfect way to end my near one week vacation, now It is time go back to reality.  I am so lucky to have such wonderful kids, family and frieds, thank the lord.