Zach’s birthday is one week apart from Tess’s so we have started doing a combo family birthday party for them both together. It’s also always a perfect end of summer celebration before all the kids go back to school! We love having the whole family together and we kept Tess’s summer theme birthday idea going for their combo party too.
I took Zach on a date night for his birthday to Uncle Carlo’s with is a DELICIOUS Italian restaurant in Lake Park if you’re local you gotta try it!
It’s been an INSANE year for Zach and for our family in many ways. Crazy ups, crazy downs. I am so proud of Zach and how he has handled moments of adversity and how he’s leaned on God through those tougher moments and then given Him the glory in the triumphant times too. Loved him at 19 but in awe of him at 37!
Around the time of Zach’s birthday we were partnering with Hoover on a campaign so we played a little birthday prank on Zach and hid all of his presents in the Hoover box and told him that Hoover had rejected our videos and required us to reshoot 😉
I felt like I did pretty good this year on getting him some gifts he’d really enjoy! I was especially excited about the “fancy” golf shoes I got for him as he was getting ready to go on his annual golf trip with his dad and I knew he’d enjoy having something nice and new for his trip.
His birthday was on a Saturday and Little Mama was cleaning out her house that same day and wanted all the kids and grandkids to come go through things they may want or that may hold sentimental value to them. Zach went over there for a few hours and apparently got into some of Aunt Karen’s wigs haha
Tess was so sweet and made a birthday quiz for Daddy in the homework hangout room and we just celebrated with a super low-key day! He made a big breakfast and also wanted to cook his own birthday dinner of steak. I ordered him a HUGE cookie cake and we ended the night with a game of Sorry!
The BIG surprise on Zach’s birthday though was the addition of a new member of our family!
While Zach was at Little Mama’s I was swimming with the big kids and Kye went up on the porch to get a water gun and called for us to come up there. This TINY little kitten was randomly on our BACK porch. I have nooooo clue where she came from or why! We haven’t had pets in a while so it’s not like we had anything that would attract her to the back porch.
Plus we have a privacy fence so who knows how she even got back there!
Of course we all ran up to the porch to see her (although at the time I mistakenly thought she was a he and we named her Leo being that “he” shared a bday with Zach). She was SO SO LITTLE (we later found out she was under 6 weeks old!).
I happened to have some random cat food leftover from when I tried to feed it to our turtle, Mortimer, who ended up not liking it.
So we set her up with little food and water and snuggled her and practiced our best “please Daddy can we keep her” faces!
When Zach and I got married we had a deal that we’d always have a pet but I wasn’t really planning on us pushing for another pet until Spear goes to kindergarten. While I LOVE having pets, I also “get it” that we travel a lot and it just doesn’t make a ton of sense for us to have another thing to take care of or worry about.
Buttttt an outside cat? Who could say no to that right?!? No litter. No shedding. No headache. Surely he’d be on board for it!
We were all shocked that he was quick to welcome Lily (after Lily Potter…had to have a Harry Potter reference of course) as a member of the family. He said she could stay outside and honestly I assumed she’d be GONE by the next morning. But sure enough, she stuck around!
I crack up at Zach’s first picture with Lily…didn’t want the proof of him holding her and now he’s probably her favorite member of our fam. She moved her way on up in our lives and hearts and is now still a majority outdoor cat but does come inside to visit as well as sleep most nights 🙂
Lily = Zach’s best Birthday gift ever…even if he didn’t know it 😉
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