happy 95th birthday, great grandma!

yesterday, we drove to indiana after soccer so that we could celebrate matt's grandma's 95th birthday with her! we came in full party mode with cake, candles, flowers and a special present (more on that in a minute). we got in a little earlier than planned and were able to visit a little before dinner.

as a last minute birthday surprise, nana was able to drive up from kansas and join her too! she got in on friday night, so we got double the visiting pleasure. we brought the boys' school notebooks for them to share as a way of conversation and madelyn drew her a very nice card on the car ride.

madelyn with great grandma r. reading her birthday card

mason was amazing as he stood by patiently waiting as great grandma looked at each page and asked him questions

maddux showed his book to nana while mason was sharing his with great grandma

and then it was maddux' turn - he is so proud of his book! i love this picture.

when matt and i started talking about this trip, we were trying to figure out what to do for her birthday gift. she doesn't have a lot of space so it limits the options significantly. then i came up with the idea of a "happy birthday" video from all of the family who couldn't be there to celebrate. nana helped me by contacting all of the extended family and then i edited everything together. my thought was that we could play it for her and then i could put a shortcut to it on her computer so that she could watch it later. i think she really liked it.

watching her special birthday video.

after giving her the video gift, we went to a lounge to share some birthday cake. mason and maddux had picked out the cake and plates for our celebration.

and then the sugar kicked in...

it is very obvious that manning rarely has sugar. he was CRAZY! it was very disturbing to great grandma that he was being so loud at 8:30pm so we headed to our room. he (really all of them) were getting crazy from the sugar. and these were super small slices of cake. we took that little cake in the picture and cut it into 8 slices - they were small but sugar packed. it took us forever to get them to settle down. just as we were turning off the lights (not that they were settled at all - especially manning), we had some visitors - great uncle dennis and great aunt joy! it was a total surprise because we hadn't even told them that we were coming since there wouldn't be any time to see them with such a tight visit (just dinner and breakfast). they heard we were in town (i think from nana) and came over after baling hay all day and before they had even gotten to eat dinner (it was now around 9:30pm). we were all very happy that they made time for us!

the kids did eventually settle down and go to sleep. we got up, packed up and met nana and great grandma for breakfast. we brought the boys' notebooks again for sharing while we waited for our food (nana hadn't seen mason's yet).

good-bye pictures of matt with his grandma.

four generations

we were so happy to be able to be with her to celebrate and that it worked out for nana to join us too. happy 95th birthday, jean! love.