Jo Cool Mama

It is a bittersweet moment when your child has yet another birthday. The fact that they are growing so fast is heartbreaking - I feel we cannot spend enough time with them because it will all be gone in a breath. It seems like Sammy was born yesterday and now he’s five! I want to cry just thinking about how fast it all went -and all I want to say is, “Hold on a sec! Can we go back and try that again?” I feel we’ve done a lot of good things in parenting but we made some mistakes (as every parent does) and I would love the chance to fix them. We can’t perform the impossible so we will have to learn from our mistakes and move forward with open hearts.

Sammy had three different birthday parties! Why so complicated? Family needs to have one party all by themselves, and then we decided to have his party with friends at school (weekends are insane and we wanted all Sammy’s friends to have a fair chance to be there). Instead of asking families to come to us - we know how hard that is - we simply went to them. I wish this was totally my idea, but I stole it from other parents who have done the same thing. Then, we had a party for the kids who aren’t in Sammy’s school but are an important part of his little life.

First, we met up with some important folks at a local park for some pizza, cupcakes and hanging out fun!

Next, we met up with some family for a wild and crazy birthday dinner…

Finally, on Sammy’s real birthday we had the school party, took a stroll at Lake Tahoe and topped it off with another family dinner at Hard Rock Cafe!

School party - it was awesome because the teacher took total control of the children. All we had to do was hand out food, cupcakes and gift bags… I loved it! Clean up was a breeze as well! Yay!

Smiles at Lake Tahoe! We just went up for a little walk, because - believe it or not - the day was really pretty chilly and the beach would have been too cold! *burrr*

Jack got a little punchy after dinner at Hard Rock. We didn’t get a good picture of the birthday boy here, but his brother will do as the stand-in.

I want to give my Boyz the world. I have to fight myself to bring life back to reality and say, “No.” a lot more than I would like to. When they cry my heart breaks but when they smile I smile with the pride of a parent who’s brought joy to their child’s life. I hope that I can give them as much as I can to make their experiences as children happy and memorable. I love them with all of my being and I hope that someday they can look at their youth and smile…