Emora's 3rd birthday and a lot of other birthdays

I have 2 cousins (brother and sister) who live here in the Fort with us. They each have families of 5, plus us, family of five, add their sister and parents- an hour's drive from here and there are pretty much birthdays every month through the year. Sheena has a great party house, with lots of room, teenage facilitator and instruments, plus she doesn't mind hosting. So about once a month or every few months, we have a birthday bash. I always wanted to have family parties. There is not so much involved for several reasons... a lot of times, everyone pitches in with parts of it- food or cake or game or pinata in this case and secondly, if we are too lazy to organize, it doesn't matter- the kids all love to see each other and play together anyways.





Emora and Neve are 2 years apart. I realized when I took this picture that with each year, the age gap won't be so noticeable. Maybe they will be close buddies. Then again, Lanelle is only a year older, so Emora likes to play with her too.



All the January birthdays: I noticed they were all parent and daughter.



Jenn asked me what kind of birthday I was doing for Emora and I realized ackk- I should at least make a cake!! I usually do 2 box cakes, but I was missing a super easy chocolate cake recipe that we've made before. It is the most delicious cake, so half of it was that. It's always fun to me to think of a design and decorate it.

Emora was given a card last year that she just loved. It was part card, part puppet, part story. She has been getting me to read it and make the dog talk all year long. I didn't want to just get rid of it, but at the same time, she was about to be 3, so I decided to sew him a body and make him into a real puppet.
I told Emora she could name him and she wanted to name him "Emora". So creative! I convinced her to give him a slightly different name- so on his collar, on his button medalion it reads: "Emory"- our newest puppet.