David Turns 8!

David celebrated his 8th birthday yesterday! The morning began with presents and then breakfast at Bob Evans with Dad.

The rest of the morning was spent playing with his presents. :)

At lunch we headed to Eagle Creek for a hobo picnic lunch. Can you get over the clouds in this photo!!!! Look at the reflections in the puddle. This is summer at her best!

Christina and I have a memory of our mom creating hobo picnics for us when I was about 11 years old. It was actually in celebration of our mom's birthday that we had that original picnic and I think two of my dear childhood friends were with us. I think we might have even had a fire on which to roast hotdogs. All this took place in the foothills of Pennsylvania mountains with a sparkling mountain stream to play in afterward.

Here's the present-day gang with their lunches!

We settled down at the perfect place which will forever be called "Wild Duck Island".

Quite a number of tame, female ducks swim around this place and they immediately knew we had food. However, this provided the best entertainment ever since the kids could play "defend the island from the invading ducks" with no harm done to all.

Just an hour or so of time but these are the memories that will hopefully last a lifetime.

Here is precious Miss Polly.

And everyone turned their hobo lunch bags into pirate hats!

Should I dare mention that we felt like Swallows and Amazons?

 I told David he could invite four friends for dinner to celebrate. Michael and I practiced having 10 kids. We just waved at each other from either end of the table.

David chose cheesecake for dessert. It was good.

In fact it was really good. Finally a success with a cheesecake! Here is the recipe in case you are interested (I only used 1 1/2 cups sugar and I used GF graham crackers instead of gingersnaps.)

David's birthday begins the four-in-five-months string of birthdays. I should probably start getting organized for the next one!