Birthday Weekend

I think Oliver had a very special 4th birthday weekend. On Saturday morning he got his birthday donut (with a candle) and then most of us went to Home Depot where 8 of the 10 kids built a skateboard shaped pencil box. From there we headed to the touch a truck event at the Children's Museum. They let us all in for free because of our family membership (rather generous of them to let 9 extra people plus Micah in for free). The kids were able to explore a Bookmobile, fire engine, tank, jeep, tow truck, utility truck, etc. and also explore the museum. Some of the people at the trucks were giving out free things like freeze pops, hats, chocolate milk, and iced tea. We were there about 2 hours and then headed to the playground close to the museum to eat a picnic lunch at a picnic table and then enjoy the playground for about an hour. Next the kids enjoyed playing inside and outside our house before a taco dinner. Our day ended with an outdoor Pops concert put on by the Williamsport Symphony. The kids would have enjoyed that more if we had brought water.

Sunday morning we went to church and then had lunch at a car hop famous for its fish called The Fence. Then we hung out at our home for two hours (they opted not to go to Oxygen Day at the Priestley House as I had originally planned). Finally we spent about 3 hours at the swimming pool which is where we had pizza, chips, cookies, cupcakes, and an Elmo birthday cake. The desserts were all from Aunt Millie and Uncle Al. Everyone (19 of us) had a great time except my Dad and Joe sustained injuries. Joe hit the bottom of the deep end with his head when going off the diving board (got 8 stitches at the ER later that night) and my dad hit his leg on the diving board. He did some impressive back dives considering he will be 73 in December! Paul's parents took him to Walmart after our lunch at the Fence to let him pick out a new bike. He got a Spiderman bike and rode it from the bike section to the cashier to their car without ever getting off of it, ha ha! I think he had a great birthday weekend!

It was a challenging weekend for me because I still felt utterly lousy, but as we all know, moms don't get sick days. It wasn't obvious how lousy I felt until I lost my voice on Monday (and today it's almost completely gone). I still don't feel great by any means, but I definitely felt worse Thursday-Sunday than I've felt the last two days. I am glad though that everyone else was feeling pretty good (aside from the pool injuries) and had a special weekend. It was the first time anyone from my side of the family had visited our church that we've gone to the past two years. We went to the first service and then Sunday school. Paul helped in Oliver's class (for the first time) so that I could go to Sunday School. My teacher, Bruce, ended up asking Joe to share about their work in Turkey instead of covering his lesson that he had prepared from the Gospels. Everyone in the class had many questions to ask Joe, and they were encouraged to hear of their work with the Iranian refugees in Turkey.