Cody's birthday . . . . and our daughter, in a dress!

Ok, so first about the Clara in a dress part . . . most of you know that I'm a pretty "sporty" girl . . and Jeremy is a VERY sporty guy. So, Clara is typically dressed in sweatsuits (we even have a Nike one and a Reebok one, if that tells you anything) or jeans and a t-shirt. However, she does, on occasion, wear a dress. I actually got this one from my friend, Crystal, who loaded me up with a bunch of her baby's clothes that no longer fit her the other day. She wore this to church this morning: a jumper and tights, believe it or not! The tights part is really rare. :) Thanks, Crystal!Now onto Cody's party. He turns 10 tomorrow, so we had a birthday party for him on Saturday. I guess I'm breaking my rule of not putting pictures on the blog of the kiddos . . . oh, well. He wanted a skateboard-themed party, as that is pretty much his life right now. So, he invited a few friends from school, our neighbor boy, and one boy from our church Bible study group, and they all spent an hour "skating" at our local skatepark. (I say "skating" because none of them were exactly dare devils about it . . . I think most of the appeal for them was just being at the park and feeling like they were cool skater boys . . you can see that in their faces in the group picture below). We then went to our church and they played ping-pong, foosball, and Jeremy set up the Gamecube on the big screen for them. I think my favorite part of the day was when they all came into the basement of the church and one of Cody's friends saw all the cool stuff and said, "This isn't like church! This is like paradise!" Priceless. Here are some pictures of the event:

Getting ready to blow out candles

Opening presents. He pretty much got all "tech deck" stuff . . . which Jeremy and I had no idea was such a big thing for kids that age these days. How cool are we?

Clara in her "North Carolina Tar Heels" sweatshirt . . Jeremy's favorite outfit on her! (See what I mean about the sporty stuff?)

The group at the skatepark

My feeble attempt at a skateboard cake. I thought it turned out fairly well . . maybe.

Tomorrow night, we'll go out to dinner to finish off the birthday celebration weekend! Happy birthday, Cody!