Happy 1/2 Birthday Carmen!!!

Today was a GREAT day!  Most of the success of the day goes to Angela who worked tirelessly throughout the entire day getting the house ready for the evening’s festivities… a surprise 1/2 birthday party for Carmen!  While Brittany and Kirstyn helped Angela prepare, Carmen had an excursion to the outlet mall with their group.  They had a great time shopping.  I picked up Carmen, Marta, and Miguel from the outlet mall and took Marta and Miguel back to Gaul’s home to hang out until it was time to come to the party.

We had it all planned out on how to get Carmen out of the  house so the decorations could go up, the food could be prepared and set up, and the guests could arrive.  Zachary almost blew the surprise by talking about a surprise we had for Carmen and people coming over, but we quickly covered it up and changed the subject before Carmen could understand what was just said!  🙂  We had 90 minutes to spend until I was supposed to bring Carmen back.  I was nervous that we wouldn’t be able to kill that kind of time with what we had to do.  I took Carmen, Zachary, and Ben, and we went and picked up our family pictures we had taken 2 weeks ago.  They turned out well.  We are going to frame two 5x7s in a single frame for Carmen to take home with her.

After we picked up the pictures (which took less time than I thought), we decided to walk around the mall and find some Chicago stuff that Carmen could buy to take home to friends and family.  Fortunately, we found a place right outside of JC Penny (where we got the pictures done), and Carmen went  wild!  🙂  She found everything she needed and even got back out of line a couple of times to go looking some more!  I kept telling her to take her time and that we were in absolutely no hurry at all!  🙂  WHEW!  After she purchased all her things, we still had about 15 minutes to waste, so we went to Home Depot and she bought her American flag.  This was the very last thing on her list and when we got out to the car, she threw her arms up in the air, smiled a huge smile, and yelled YES! YES!  I am done!  🙂  She was so happy to have found everything she was looking for!

By that time (after 3 or 4 calls back home), they finally told me that everyone was there and I could come back home now.  When Carmen walked through the front door, she was met by 25 people yelling SURPRISE!  She had no clue and was VERY surprised and happy herself!  She couldn’t believe that we had done this for her and that all these people had come!

Fortunately, everyone we had invited was able to come…  The Gaul Family along with Marta, the Oscarson Family along with Maria and Luis, Miguel, and Elena.  All in all, there were 6 of the Spanish kids there (including Carmen).  After the surprise, we had a great dinner of hamburgers (of course), hot dogs, chips, salsa, fruit, vegetable tray, and a huge cooler full of strawberry lemonade.  I think that the burgers and the strawberry lemonade were the hits with the kids.

After finishing eating, everyone hung out, played games like croquet, Apples to Apples, Wii Sing, ping pong, and much more.  A couple of pictures from the festivities are shown below…

After playing games for while, we called everybody upstairs and had cake and ice cream.  We got a chocolate cake with vanilla cheesecake filling and white frosting.  On the top, we put the US Flag, and below that we had them write “Happy 1/2 Birthday Carmen.”  We lit 14 and 1/2 candles (cut one in half) for her, sang happy birthday to her in both English and Spanish.  She blew out the candles and we cut and served the cake with vanilla ice cream.

After everyone had their fill of cake and ice cream, we gave her our gifts.  The Gaul family gave her a photo album to put her photos in from her trip to Chicago.  Brittany and Kirstyn made her a card and we gave her the gift from us..  a red exercise ball!  She absolutely loves the one we have in the basement and is always sitting on it, rolling it around, etc.  As you can tell from the picture, she was VERY excited and surprised to get it!  🙂

When all gifts were opened, everyone packed up and left, all wishing Carmen a happy birthday again!  She could not stop saying “thank you” for everything.  What a relief that we were able to keep it a surprise, despite what Zachary had said.  At that point, we were dead tired (around 11 pm) and all in need of our beds, so we hurried and cleaned up what we could, got ready for bed, and out went the lights around midnight.  🙂

Happy 1/2 Birthday, Carmen!  We hope you enjoyed your day!