August Birthdays

The month of August is full of birthdays in the Gray house.  Birthday’s alone are special enough, but what about a birthday celebration times 4?  This year, we were able to celebrate Nana, Uncle Quentin, Cody and Case’s birthday all together. What a treat!  Cody’s mother, brother and his two children, Hanna and Aaron, drove to Colorado for a week of fun and celebration.  I think we celebrated everyone's birthday at least 2-3 times over the trip.  One of our celebrations was a homespun version which included birthday dinner, presents for everyone, multiple cakes with candles and decorating cupcakes for the kids.
 
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The entire visit was full of excitement. The Case and Cole had so much fun spending extended amounts of time with his cousins. All four of them ran and chased and played until exhaustion set in every night. Cute cousin comments from Case included, ‘Hanna and I are a team.’ And, ‘I wish my cousins could stay here every night and sleep on the floor.’ So cute! With a house full of kids our family visit included a lot of kid friendly activities. We went to The North Pole and the cousins rode at least one million child friendly Santa inspired carnival rides. We traveled to the zoo, hand fed an elephant and saw a brand new 5 day old giraffe. A birthday dinner at a restaurant is always a treat and this time was no exception. The kids sampled, ate and loved their first blooming onion. Finally, the cousins all had their first Chuck-E-cheese experience together. Oh. My. Goodness. What can I say about Chuck-E-Cheese. Pizza, arcade games, rides, plastic cups full of clinking tokens, blinking lights, game tickets flying through the air and shooting out of machines, a giant dancing mouse, skeet ball, skeet ball, skeet ball and finally all the emotions that come with counting, redeeming your tickets, picking the perfect toy and maximizing your prize intake at the prize stand. All that in 3 hours! The family time was wonderful no matter what we did together. More pics of our adventure will follow.