on mama's birthday

A few weeks ago we celebrated Erin's birthday with a full day of fun. After a lazy morning, we went over to our friends Jenni, Steven, and baby Justin's house for a surprise party, under the guise of getting together to watch Michigan get destroyed in the annual rivalry game with Ohio State. Will's friends Kaitlyn and Gabe came to the party, and they got hotdogs and cake, so it was a lot of fun.

Will helped decorate mama's birthday cake with candles and helped us sing to her.

After the stomping of Michigan went as expected, we went home to watch the Hawkeyes, open presents, and do whatever else mom wanted to do.

Turns out what mom wanted to do was set up the Christmas decorations around the house - including putting our tree together. As it was the week before thanksgiving, this made little sense to me, but we did what the birthday girl wanted. Will was eager to help and get into all the fun stuff he hadn't seen in a year.

Duke helped out too.

In addition to ornaments, we have a good deal of other decorations we got out and played with.

Erin had a great idea of starting a family tradition in which each of us gets a new Christmas ornament each year to put on the tree. Will got a choo-choo ornament and I got a guitar that sings "Feliz Navidad" when you push a button on it. Will has almost run the batteries out on the guitar for pushing the button so many times since I got it.

Time to put the ornaments on the tree... and push the "Feliz Navidad" button one more time...