Sarah's 11th Birthday Party

This was Sarah's invitation to her birthday party last Friday. She invited everyone in her class. She had a chocolate fountain and all sorts of yummy things to dip in it, because Sarah LOVES chocolate.   Here's a few pics of  "the coolest birthday party ever" according to her friends.  :) 

 Notice the wet hair? This year wasn't a pool party, but there were water guns and when that wasn't enough, some of the kids got water out of the pool to throw on each other. Kaitlyn stuck her whole head in the pool to wash all the chocolate off of her face.

 Opening presents. She got a chocolate bar from her friend Skyla. Did I mention Sarah loves chocolate?

 Gathering around the Karaoke machine. Sarah got some karaoke cd's to go with her karaoke  machine she got for Christmas.

 Partying in the house....

 The karaoke machine hooked up to the TV and Tom's 7.1 surround system is way cooler...

 Sarah had so much fun with her friends, and it lasted an hour longer than we planned. It could've gone on for several extra hours, but Tom had to get ready to leave for Germany the next day, so we had to bring the fun to an end.  

Happy 11th Birthday Sarah!!

A new car for Mother's Day!

So, the day after we got back from Indiana, a few days before Mother's Day, Tom went out and bought us a new car. It's a brand new Mazda 5.  We've known we were going to replace our old van this year sometime, and I guess Tom thought it was the right time. We just refinanced our house and lowered our payment by $140 per month which freed up some money for a new car payment. We're also going to save about $100 a month on the gas savings alone. So, it won't really be anything we notice. I just hate that we now have debt other than our house!! Oh well.  Our old van was on it's way out. It was 13 years old, and acted like it.  It was very roomy though, and now our new car is MUCH smaller, but it seats 6 and gets way better gas mileage, so I can't complain. The kids love it because it has a sunroof, a DVD player with a game system and controllers, and bluetooth for our cellphones so that we can be completely hands free when we talk on the cellphone in the car. Very cool.  So, it was a really nice Mother's Day gift.  (Although, Tom admits that he didn't actually think about it being Mother's Day that week :)

On the actual Mother's Day, Tom got me a big box of chocolates that he hand picked for me when he was on a trip. I love chocolate, so it was perfect.  Alan made me a cool sign out of his legos that reads, "Happy Mother's Day". You can't really tell from the pictures, but he did a really good job.