Birthday, Gotcha, Gotcha

We had much to celebrate at our humble abode this week.

1st up - the Birthday Girl

On the eve of Julia's birthday, she spent the night at a sleepover.  She was home for her birthday and off to another sleepover the following day.  If summer continues like this, she's going to need a job and personal assistant ;)

This was a different sort of birthday.  Typically Julia counts down the days and has grand ideas for both her party and gift wish list.  Not this year.  She was noncommittal on everything.  Her Granny always makes her a dessert of her choice, and that was one area where Julia had an opinion, so red velvet cake it was.  She also wanted knock-off Birkenstock sandals, so we made that happen.

I just have to share my favorite Julia quotes of the year.

1. When Andy tried to talk with her friends at a football game, Julia quipped, "Don't you have some friends your own age that you can hang out with?"

2. She loves real estate and looks at it regularly.  She was looking at a house that she said could be our retirement home and stated, "Well this mortgage is tolerable."  She followed that by asking, "Is there such a thing as a child realtor?"

Just a few days after Julia's birthday, we observed her Gotcha day.  We've been parenting this girl for 13 years! We have really gotten out of the habit of celebrating Gotcha Days at all other than to just say, "Happy Gotcha Day!"  --sometimes with a shout out on social media.

Wyatt's Gotcha Day follows Julia's by just two days.  It is so very hard to believe that it was a full decade ago that we met an Ultra-man loving boy who was ready for adventure!  He's grown into a witty 15 year old who loves on little kids so well and with such patience.  After the family gathered to celebrate Julia's birthday yesterday, many of us took the party to the pool where Wyatt spent probably 45 minutes just working on learning how to dive while teaching Regan how to do it.  Both have lots of work to do on their dives, but they both made great progress last night.  

Hey, hey the gangs all here!  My smaller camera lens is not working, so I have few pictures of our celebration on both Julia's actual birthday and for the family gathering as I used my phone for most of the photos.  Instead of individual photos this year, I just took a full-group picture. We missed Savannah.  When going over the best day of the weekend to gather, she suggested August 13th - when she finishes her summer internship :) We had a fun, lively, and loud celebration as is usual with this group.  Wyatt stated over and over again how much fun it was, so hopefully, we will have another evening at the pool this summer with all the local cousins.