Days with the Dorans

  So I am in a bit of denial that my baby is a TEENAGER!! Thankfully I already had decorations and let's face it... I get everything from Amazon anyway! The one thing that IS tough is not being able to see other people. There are a lot of people who are doing "Drive By" type birthdays where the birthday person stands outside and people drive by which sounds nice but since I'm a video person, I put out a call (kind of last minute) for people to wish our Goose a happy birthday and send it to me. We went over to Nana and Papa's in the sunroom again and showed it to him. HERE is the video with his reaction.

 It's hard to believe that we have another teenager! Time is truly flying!! It feels like it was just yesterday that this little rainbow was born but I can't imagine or remember my life before her. As beautiful as Al is outside, she's even more beautiful inside (when she's not tormenting her brothers). Al decided she'd like to see Star Wars so we got tickets to the theatre (so nice to be able to reserve seats). The Cosmans and Gordons came too even though they had seen the movie before. I see why they went again. We LOVED it!! Ali had decided she just wanted to celebrate with family but it was nice to see our friends earlier in the day too. We enjoyed popcorn of course- and I enjoy the free refills to feed all my kiddos! I'm digging the $5 movies! We also saw "The Greatest Showman" which we also LOVED! In the afternoon, the Drapals all came over and of course Auntie Jodi too. She didn't bring anyone because they are all sick (boo!). ...

 I still can't wrap my mind around Joe being a teenager! He isn't the typical teenager of 2016. I feel like he doesn't have a need for social media (yeah) and he still goes on walks with his mom and dog and that makes me happy about him. I wanted to do something special for him but when asked what he wanted, he said, "I don't know... some pencils... Maybe a new sketch book..." Well we got him those things~ He also got the new Michael Vey book (he's a fan), a thermos so he can have his beloved soup at school, a new black hoodie (because can you really have too many?), and Fire Cheetos, which are his fav!  And... although he wasn't pumped about it, we got him a phone. It was my mom's old phone and adding a line actually made our bill go DOWN! (who woulda thought?) We got it for him so he could have it when he was by himself. We still had a "home" cell phone (which has pretty much turned into Ali's since the littles are ne...