Ethan's Birthday Week! :)

Several years ago the "grandparents" began a tradition of taking the boys out to lunch (or breakfast, or supper) at the restaurant of their choice and either gave them their gift, or even better...took them on their own personal shopping spree!

Every year the boys are "surprised" by my Aunt and Mom in some way. They never know when or how they are going to greet them, they just know it's coming at some point leading up to their birthday!!

They began scheming of ways they could surprise Ethan. Since he typically expects them in the morning, they decided to do it at a different time. I let them know when we would be out, and they let themselves in to "set up" the surprise!

Ethan was greeted with lots of CLUES!!! He still had no idea what was going on...

We "thought" the swamp and trees referred to somewhere in our backyard. The boys took off looking for the clue to no avail. I had to secretly text Deni to figure out where in the world the clue was. I was concerned that we had already blown the whole fun, but she quickly texted me back saying they were referring to this photo print we have hanging on the wall. Crisis adverted and we headed back inside.

He had many, many, many clues to hunt down. Each one leading to another clue!

We'd go inside, and the next clue would take us outside, back and forth! HAHA


He finally got to like Clue #14 or something crazy like that, which told him to go to the GREEN room (yes, our lovely green rental bathroom...gotta love the "vintage" tiles!) They were waiting in ambush in our shower!!
He opened the door and about had a heart attack! It was so fun, and crazy!
On Ethan's ACTUAL birthday we took the day off from school, as we do for every birthday and went to see the new movie Happy Feet TWO. It was a cute film. Later that night we made his favorite dinner, hamburgers and french fries, followed by a build your own Sundae!
Of course Ashton thoroughly enjoyed celebrating Ethan-style!
They added brownies, chocolate syrup, gummy bears, M&Ms, snickers, twix, and quite possibly the kitchen sink! It was ooey gooey yumminess!!
Nonna and Pop are always a big part of the special time for the kids too. They typically pick the birthday boy for lunch and shopping, but Nonna came down with some 24 hr. type of yucky bug. She was so disheartened and disappointed she couldn't take Ethan out on his actual birthday, but they came to pick him up on Saturday morning before his birthday party instead! They took him to breakfast and got him such lovely nice gifts.

He is a very blessed boy!!