Happy Birthday Joel

Today is Joel's birthday.  Sweet honey badger turns 4. 

This boy is something else.  He is definitely a honey badger through and through but also has a sweet side to him that is so precious.  We do admire how determined/stubborn he is and have no fear of Joel sucumbing to any sort of peer pressure whatsoever.  He wont budge from what he does/does not want to do.  So we're learning how to teach him to use that for good.  It also brings me to my knees daily because I have no idea how to parent him.  My mom once said raising kids requires lots of prayer.  And trying to figure out what this boy needs requires lots of prayer. But oh how he melts my heart.  He loves to be snuggle buddies and just come up and randomly give me kisses. And he gets so excited about just the littest things. Its been so fun having Joel the past 4 years. Oh so sweet. Joel, you add so much joy and good to our family.

Joel has been talking about his birthday party for months now and its funny but when he would get mad at me say "I'm not inviting you to my birthday party"  Thats when you knew he was upset with you or didnt like what you were saying :) 

I sat next to the Kona Ice's wife the other swim meet and started talking to her and on the way home thought about having him over for a birthday party.  We looked into it and the more Brent and I talked about it the more we wanted snow cones on a hot summer day :) so we booked the snow cone truck to come to a park near our house.  And during the week its even cheaper - sold!  So it wasn't too hard to get Joel on board!  So we had a playdate party at a park in our neighborhood.  Although I'm afraid now when the kids want to bike to that park that they will always want the kona ice truck to come!

And I think it was a hit!  The kids got to add their own amount of syrup to the ice.  It was fun to see who had more syrup or more ice in their cups.  My boys snow cone philosphy is a little ice/lots of syrup :)

Brent crashed the mommy/kid party for his own snow cone and then headed to work after :)

He loved it and I'm so glad. I hope its the start of a great year.