Livi Girl: Charlie's Party!

livi girl what?

You may be wondering about the name "livi girl." When I first started with this whole online community stuff, I wanted to maintain some anonymity (and yet I put up pictures of my boys for all to see?). But when you choose an online user name for yourself, you are choosing an identity, one name to tell others who you are. So I had to ask myself - who am I? I wanted my user name to go beyond my job as a housewife or mother because I so often get caught up in those jobs that I forget there's more to me. So I didn't go for "mom of 2" or "domestic goddess." But I wanted my name to be meaningful and larger in scope. What is truly most important in my life? Well, the obvious answer is God. And the attributes of God most important to my life are love and peace. So I went to a baby names website and looked up names meaning peace. Livi was one of the names and it seemed lively and energetic, so that's how I came to have the user name "livi girl."

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Charlie's Party!

Charlie turned 3 years old this week! We celebrated with a fabulous "Backyard Birthday Splash!" party. We had a sprinkler, Slip-n-slide, inflatable pool, some bubble toys, a small fishing "pond," and lots of friends to help celebrate. The backyard splash was a great way to have a mostly outside birthday party in August. I think everyone had a really good time. Of course we had the famous Costco cake (I've blogged before about my sordid love affair with this cake, and since Charlie is too young to preemptively voice his opinion, I was able to get the white cake with white icing) which garnered lots of compliments. Unfortunately, I only got to eat one piece of the cake, but that's a story for another day...

Instead of gifts, I asked everyone to bring school supplies to donate to the local Children's Home and I was blown away by our friends' generosity! I expected the kids to bring a couple notebooks and a maybe a pack of pencils, but everyone brought a bag full of goodies! The list-maker in me just had to catalog everything, so I included it at the end of this blog. The boys helped me count everything. Charlie has trouble counting past two (he always wants to count 1, 2, 5 and he sometimes insists that he just turned 5, not 3...) so Coulson did most of the heavy math. I love being able to donate stuff instead of getting a bunch of toys that we don't need, but Coulson is starting to get wise on my plan and he says that he wants his friends to bring gifts for his next birthday.