Jack is 7

i love that jack's birthday is on st. patrick's day.   he loves it too.  says that's why his favorite color is green. 

so this year we've instituted a new policy.  starting with this birthday.  now it's not going to be everyone's thang, but we've decided it's going to be our family's thang.  we are no longer going to have birthday parties.  yowza. 

it seems like kids parties are getting out of control, and pinterest is certainly not helping anything ;)

using the money we'd spend on a party, we've decided to do a unique family event instead.  this year we're going as a family to disney on ice in lieu of a big shebang for the j-man.

we got to thinking about the last party we had.  how it cost a pretty penny even doing it inexpensively. 
i really like the creativity of planning a party, but we just would rather create memories as a family.  doing things we wouldn't normally do or think to spend money on.  our hope is that we'll do some pretty fun things together over the years celebrating the lives of our boys.  it'll take a ton of creativity coming up with three special birthday events every year!

disney on ice isn't until this weekend so on jack's birthday day we did some fun family hanging out.  we took a two hour bike ride in the afternoon, and jack helped me make his cake.  green on green.  his dinner request was stouffer's mac n' cheese and hot dogs.  we drank mini coke bottles and had a great day celebrating him.

jack's 7 year old privilege -  to check the mail by himself every day
jack's 7 year old responsibility - to take his brothers to brush their teeth every night

side note: we ended up changing finn's privilege from turning on the tv when he woke up to being able to get frozen grapes from the freezer any time he wants (just trust me)






early morning presents from family and friends.











chocolate milk straws from hallie, jason and sadie jane



growing monkeys of the sea variety.





earlier in the week jack helped me make a birthday banner.  we sewed little gingham flags onto yarn.   the day of his birthday he asked me to add his name to it "jacky" just like that, with a "y."  so i tracked down some felt and fulfilled the request.







rc helicopter from grammie and papa



he wanted to decorate his own cake, and i obliged although it took some overcoming in my mind.



so glad i did though.





perfectly imperfect.

















why am i the only one who looks like we went on a two hour bike ride in the wind and heat?







we can't wait until our disney on ice adventure next weekend to keep the celebrating going!