Laila's birthday celebration

This year Laila's birthday celebration didn't quite turn out as expected.  Instead of celebrating on her birthday like I had hoped we had to do it in stages.  It seems we were destined to have bad luck this year.  The first thing we wanted to do was a service project.  We sat down and asked the boys what they would like to do this year and they unanimously said that they wanted to do something for their friend's family.  This family has been such good friends to us and has had a devastating year.  Larie, the mom, discovered that her kidney was going through failure again--the third time.  After months of dialysis, sickness, infections, etc. they had finally found a match!  The boys have been very concerned for Larie and regularly ask how she is doing, if she is going to die, and when she can get a kidney.  The boys really wanted to do something nice for Larie and her family.  I called Larie up and asked her what we could do for them.  She mentioned that she noticed a bunch of weeds in her backyard that she physically cannot take care of and that she would love to have some flowers planted in her front yard.  I had wanted to do our service project before Laila's birthday but every single Saturday something was going on.  We finally decided on the Saturday following her birthday.  Friday night Eli started throwing up so I had to call Larie and reschedule.  Larie was going in for her transplant the following Monday so we decided that we would go over that Monday for Family Home Evening while Larie and her family were in Dever at the hospital (if she got sick she would not be able to get the transplant and we were concerned that if we went before Monday we would pass on any germs that might still be remaining).  On Monday morning we headed over to her house to weed and plant.  The boys worked really hard and were so cheerful.  After a little over an hour they were hungry and tired.  We only had a little bit left to finish so we decided that we would come back Wed. morning before Larie got home from the hospital.

My friend brought over cupcakes on Laila's actual birthday

please ignore my bare chested boys--they don't like to wear pj's to bed for some reason

Piper was there to make sure we stayed on task

weeding

As mentioned before, we had planned on celebrating her birthday on her real birthday, May 2nd, but Isaac ended up having a field trip that was rescheduled due to snow for that very day.  I didn't know what to do because I didn't want to make him miss his field trip.  While I wanted to celebrate her life I didn't want to celebrate to the detriment of the boys and making him miss his field trip would be wrong.  I really like her birthday to be a day with no interruptions where Mike takes off work and they boys get out of school and we just spend time together as a family the entire day.  So we decided to let Isaac go to his field trip and celebrate the following week.  Mike planned to take the day off and we made plans for the boys to get out of school.

Unfortunately, Tuesday night when I got up to feed the baby, I found myself throwing up.  I was certain that if I just got a blessing I'd be better in a few hours.  That didn't happen.  I continued to be sick throughout the day.  Mike had already taken the day off so he stayed home and took care of me and Piper.  Since I wasn't able to do anything but lay on the couch, we decided to send the boys to school.  We had to cancel finishing the service project because I could not do anything and our plans for celebrating were once again ruined.  Plus, it rained the entire day.

I was really upset.  Every time I planned anything something went wrong and I was just frustrated and mad.  I decided that at this point nothing was going to work so what was the point?  Mike convinced me that it would be fine and we could plan something the following Saturday--two and a half weeks after her birthday.

We finally got to celebrate her birthday on Saturday.  We bought balloons and flowers, some KFC, and went to the cemetery.  We had a nice picnic and then released balloons.  When we got home we sang happy birthday and ate a frozen pie (chosen by the boys).

I'm glad that Mike convinced me to go through with our celebration because I really think it's important for us to celebrate that day.

Eli wanted his dinosaurs to share in on the fun