Titus celebrates 8th Birthday at Fall Fest and McCloud Mt.

Boy did this child ever have a busy, busy Birthday. I still haven't fully recooperated. Titus' birthday was Friday, October 30th. That same night we were having a Fall festival at church. I didn't plan a party for him because there was no way a birthday party could compare to our fall festival we had planned. 

I had helped work on getting the fall festival together.  So I had spent several days at church, with others, to help get things ready. I was exhausted Friday morning, on his birthday. He had asked that Maynard wake him up early, before he left for work, so he could open his present. Maynard tried waking me around 5:45 a.m., but I just couldn't get up so Maynard went ahead and left for work. 

Around 7 I heard Titus going through the house looking for his Daddy. He was upset that he wasn't there. So I decided to throw Maynard under the bus, and told him "Daddy must not have wanted to wake you up that early." Lol. So we let Titus open his present while we had Daddy on the phone. 

He was excited to get a tablet just like Josiah had gotten for his birthday. I just realized the box was upside down in this picture. Lol

I had offered to take them to McDonalds for breakfast, but Titus wanted pancakes with a candle in it. Just like Josiah had. He was disappointed because his candles weren't trick candles like Josiah had. Oh good grief. I can never be one step ahead with these kids. 

I had planned on being at school all day that day to work on Fall Fest stuff so I told him I would bring him McDonalds for lunch. He asked for 8 breakfast burritos because he was 8 now. Ha ha. That kid loves him some breakfast burritos.

I dropped the kids off at school and picked up Titus a camo birthday balloon and a candy apple I had ordered for him. I took it to him and he smiled so big. I could kick myself for not remembering to get his picture with it. 

Here's what the apple looked like. He shared a bite with me and it was delicious. 

At lunch I brought the kids McDonalds to school. 

Titus told me thanks for making his day so much more special. I just love him. 

So after lunch Kayla, Heather, and I had to get busy and get this fall festival ready to go. Birthday was on hold and my focus was switched to Fall Fest. 

The kids could dress up if they wanted and Josiah and Amelia did. Titus dressed up as a doctor, but then got embarrassed and changed before it even started. 

She was so excited to be Dorothy. She was so ragged out that I called her Orphan Dorothy. 

Josiah was dressed up as a Mad Scientist. 

He's a nut. Lol

One of our biggest complaints was we didn't get many pictures. We worked so hard and was so busy we couldn't get around to taking pictures. I only got a few and a few people sent me what they had taken. 

Here's a few pics of my pre-school area. 

This game was a whole lot of work. Super cute and the little kiddos loved it. 

It's supposed to be a pumpkin, but it got a little lopsided in the making. Each cup had a napkin over it and you just poked a hole through it and grabbed the prize. 

There was always a crowd of littles playing in the water at the duck pond. 

Pick a Pop was a fun pre-school game too. Choose a sucker. If it had a black dot on the end you won the sucker and a prize. If no dot then you just won the sucker.  Little pre-schoolers don't really like losing so we tried to make it easy on them. 

Ring toss was originally intended for Pre-schoolers as well, but when the word got out that you won the koolaide, we drew lots of crowds of all ages. 

 As you can see, teens even wanted a chance to win a koolaide. At one point I had like 6 teen boys trying over and over to win one. It was hilarious. 

I stayed so busy in my corner that I didn't get pics of anything else. Maynard was in his corner with his booth. He re-created the game Grand Prize game on the old Bozo the Clown show. Every time I glanced at him he always had a huge long line. I don't think he ever had a break in line. 

We had several more booths up such as fish toss, football, basket ball, seek and find, photo booth, cake walk, pie-face, donut on a string relay,  2 inflatables, hayrides, and more. 

For refreshments we served chilli, hot dogs, popcorn, caramel popcorn, and funnel cakes. 

A big shout out to our kitchen helpers. They stayed so busy and worked hard the whole time as well as us working directly with the children. 

We had about 30 mins left of the night and we still had a ton of candy and prizes left. We decided to have a candy throw like we did at Kids Crusade. It was probably the highlight of all the kid's night. It was amazing to see that amount of candy being thrown out to all them kids. 

I had ran into an amazing deal at the Family Dollar store earlier that week. I was able to buy tons of prizes and even balls for a total of $25. They had 90% off their clearance and I racked up. Our church members provided all the candy and there was an abundance of it. The prizes were also nice to have in addition to all the candy. 

I wish I had gotten a picture of all the candy we had. We filled a huge tin washtub up with candy and still couldn't fit it all in there. 

Do you understand now why a birthday party for Titus would never even compare to that???  At the very end, our associate pastor led the crowd in singing Happy Birthday to Titus. It was really sweet and special. 

Another exciting part of Titus' birthday was that we had family come in. Each fall our family tries to get together and do something. Usually we go camping, but this year it was too cold to camp. We ended up with 16 "Harper" family coming to visit. They also had a blast at our fall fest. It was good to see them have fun even though I was so busy and couldn't really visit with them just yet. 

We stayed late and cleaned up and went home and crashed. We had plans early the next morning. Titus bday celebrations continued. 

We had reservations for a party of 21 at McCloud Mountain in Tennessee.  Titus agreed to celebrating his bday there. Plus, I just knew my family was gonna love it. We were not disappointed. It was gorgeous. A bit chilly, but beautiful. 

When we arrived at the restaraunt, we tried taking pictures of our view from the table, but it was really dark inside. We did get a few okay ones. 

Titus got to enjoy dessert for his Birthday. 

After our meal we headed out to take in the scenery and take some pictures. 

We were all laughing in this picture because they were telling Maynard to keep scooting back. Maynard was acting like he was gonna fall off the ledge. 

You would think this was the end to all of the partying, but nope!!

We left Tennessee and headed back to our church for cake and ice-cream. 

This was impromptu so nothing was decorated. The restaraunt wouldn't allow me to bring his cake inside. Bummer, but we made the best of it. 

After cake and ice-cream, Mamaw invited the kids to their motel room to swim with their cousins. 

After they swam a couple of hours, we brought Kamden home with us for a sleepover and pizza. 

We kept them so busy that they never really realized that it was Halloween. They had no idea what they were missing and had just as much as fun as the kids who did go trick or treating. 

What a fun weekend we had. Everyone had a great time and we got to celebrate 8 years of Titus Luke!!!  He has brought so much joy to our lives. 

Happy 8th Birthday, Titus.