Tess turned 3 on Monday July 31st! I like that we always do her party before her actual birthday as it gets her in the birthday mood 😉
Our birthday tradition is for all the family to gather in the bedroom of the birthday child and sing “Happy Birthday” to them right as they wake up. Tess was already awake on her birthday (she’s usually the first awake in our house) so she was happily resting in her bed when we came in! She LOVED all the attention and focus on her…you can see the video here 🙂
Kye had gone with me to the grocery store a few weeks prior and we found some Mickey waffles and thought they’d be a great birthday breakfast!
Realizing they are Mickey heads 😉 She doubled up and also got donuts leftover from her party!
It’s so fun having a summer birthday because we can really have the WHOLE day about Tess. However, since the other kids have their birthdays during the school year I try not to overdue it for Tess’s birthday. We had a super fun day but I didn’t go overboard because I don’t want expectations for all the kids that I simply wouldn’t be able to fulfill during a school day! Tess had two requests for the day: go swimming and see Carter and William. We were able to make both happen (however, William came over the day after). I text Casey about going over to see Carter and in the meantime we hopped in the pool. It was SO CHILLY!
We got ready and loaded up in the car to head to “Carter’s House.” They recently moved which is a bummer because their old house was like 3 min away from me and now it’s a solid 20-25. Wahhhh! But the longer drive gave us the opportunity to listen to Tess’s birthday song on repeat 😉
Casey was a brave woman! She had a barely 2 week old baby and had my crew and Courtney’s crew over. It was quite the party!
A hand sanitizer party 😉
Waking up Cam! This kid is going to be SUPER easy going haha
He was STILL ASLEEP. With the lights on and all those kids all over the crib! Sweet boy!
Someone wants to be the baby 😉
All 7 cousins together for the first time!
Tessie was so, so happy to see Carter on her birthday!
These two were pretty pumped to get to see their BFF cousins too 😉
I had a bit of a rough day personally as it’s the first day of the “3 nos in a row” with our adoption (you can read all the details about that here)
Once we were home Tess went down for nap and the older two helped me wrap her gifts!
Leading up to her birthday Tess had been wanting to go eat pizza. But the day prior to her birthday Kye ate out with some of his Bible School classmates so Zach took Britt and Tess to McDonald’s to grab a cheap, quick lunch with them. It was Tess’s first time ever having McDonald’s and SHE LOVED IT. She doesn’t ever eat the chicken at CFA or Zaxby’s but Zach said she gobbled those McD nuggets right up! After that she was pretty insistent on wanting more McDonald’s for her birthday. We wanted to make it as special as we could so we drove across town to go to the McDonald’s that has a play place. We have one literally 2 seconds down the street from our house but no play place and we figured we wanted the birthday girl to have as much fun as possible.
Got to McDonald’s. And the dang play place was closed. It was so sad and pitiful!!!
The workers told us that it got messed up during the tornados (like last year) and they just haven’t fixed it yet. Who wants to bet that that insurance money is long gone and the play place won’t ever gets fixed?
There were cute little flower gatherings on the tables and Tess thought they were decorations for her birthday!
The people who worked there felt bad and gave us a free Happy Meal so Kye was lucky enough to get two cheeseburgers. Growin’ boy!
Our little McDonald’s loving girl!
Our eyes being so close in this picture really shows how alike they are!
When we got home the older kids wanted to get all the gifts set up on display
I took a video of her coming out to see her presents!
I struggled with some “Mommy Guilt” over Tess’s big gift. For Kye’s 3rd birthday and Britt’s 3rd birthday they each got Power Wheels Jeeps. Y’all. We do NOT need any more jeeps. And when we bought theirs my reasoning for getting jeeps was so two kids could fit and my intention was to buy one for Kye to share with a baby brother someday and one for Britt to share with a baby sister. And Britt rarely drives hers AND Kye got another power wheels a few years ago for Christmas so we have PLENTY. Instead I decided to get Tess a $29 Finding Dory Quad. It’s only 6v. It only goes up to like 40 lbs. But y’all it’s ALL SHE NEEDS. And she was thrilled as could be and super excited and I love that it’s so easy for her to drive. It took Kye and Britt a long time to get the hang of their Power Wheels but Tess hopped right on and drove off! I feel guilt but I know it’s dumb to feel bad. She knows she’s loved just as much as her siblings and one cheaper jeep isn’t going to change that! To make it fair I’m sure we’ll do something similar for Tab. I don’t see the LAST kid getting a $300 Power Wheels haha!
Grandpa and Grammie hooked her up this year! She got a Moana doll, Pua stuffed animal and a super cute Elvis book!
I shop year round for my kids and am always picking up random deals on things. Tess is tricky because she is that third kid and we do have so many toys already. But she is also VERY easy to please and was so excited about everything. I’d say the favorite from us was the Moana microphone 😉
Gift Envy 😉
We used leftover cupcakes from her party (another advantage of party before birthday!) as her birthday cake! Here’s us singing to her!
People ALWAYS comment on Tess’s light hair and I love to mention that it was SO DARK when she was born! It’s crazy that it’s the same child!!! We love our Tessie, that’s for sure, and she had such a fun day as her first day being THREE!
When I shared this collage photo on FB I had THE sweetest comment from Stacy who actually delivered Tess. I thought it would be nice to save the comment as it’ll be neat for her to read one day 🙂 Her delivery was so special and whenever I get a little sad about not birthing more babies I just think about how perfect my last time went and how it was the best possible note to end on 🙂
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