Birthday Boy...

Judd's birthday was last week and me and the kids had planned a special day for him, but it kinda turned into a nightmare. It started out by Dawson getting sent to the principal's office at school...Happy Birthday Dad right?!...and then everything just seemed to go downhill from there.

Me and the boys had picked Judd out an awesome new tent since our dogs ripped a hole in ours last year. He has been wanting to go camping every weekend for awhile now, but between Cooper's surgery and the lovely spring weather we've been having it obviously hadn't happened so the kids and I decided that we would set up camp in the living room. They were so excited! We bought him a bunch of new camping gear, had a camping cake made, and we were even going to roast marshmallows on the bbq...

After moving all the furniture in the house into the kitchen while he was at work me and Dawson attempted to begin the tent set-up. I have set up plenty of tents in my life and I seriously thought it would be no problem...well, it was a problem. The tent was ginormous and the poles were these huge, weird, color-coded things that I had no idea what to do with...it was a mess and there was no way we were ever gonna get it setup in my lifetime and definitely not before Judd got home from work at 5:00!

Just as I was about to have a nervous break-down from trying to figure the dang thing out Judd called and informed me that he was almost home...Great! It was only 3:00 and we had planning on surprising him at his work and heading over to Tucanos for dinner but that obviously wasn't gonna happen either!

I was so frustrated I just told the kids to go hide inside the flat, un-assembled tent anyway and jump out when he walked in the door minutes later...The look on his face was awesome when he was greeted by the 4 of us hiding inside a flat tent the size of our entire house with poles strung everywhere. Awesome! (I wish I would have taken pictures of it:)

We explained our intentions and he just laughed at us, opened his gifts, and we headed to dinner. We ended up not getting into Tucanos so we had to settle for Chilis. Cooper was a monster, all 3 boys were throwing food and fighting, Dawson spilled a completely full drink all over the table, and to top it off just as he took his first bite of food he lost a tooth!

At this point we were wondering why we ever left the house (and also why we ever had children to begin with) but we ended the night on a good note by having cake and ice cream at Grandma and Grandpa Holt's. Judd and his grandpa share the same birthday and it is always fun to get together with them and celebrate.

That was probably the most peaceful part of the night. After cake we headed home and finished setting up the tent only to realize it wouldn't stay up without being staked into the ground...again Awesome.

So we took it down, fought with the kids for 45 minutes about why the stinkin tent wouldn't work and went to bed...Happy Birthday Judd! I hope you had a great one, pretty sure you didn't but I love you anyway! Thanks for being such a trooper...