Lori, Lori howdy to ya!

My sweet baby sister Lori turned twenty two on February 9th! We postponed the get-to-gether just long enough so that Neil and Julie got to come down the following weekend and celebrate with all of us. We had a fun Friday night of party festivities *grins*
I love the way we all get along so well, we have such fun just sitting around talking to each other. Talking about everything, stories of when we were kiddo's, sports, current events, politics, life. It's my favorite! *grins*

We ate a delicious dinner of three different kinds of pizza, I really like the meat lovers with sausage, pepperoni and bacon (oh how I love bacon *laughs*). There were ten adults and two little boys, there's almost so many of us that we need an extra table, wow!

After dinner we went straight to the gifts. Lori's such a selfless person, she "couldn't think of a thing that she needed", but she got a bunch of fun gifts anyway *winks*

Bryce is always such a helper with gifts. He gets so excited and can't wait to see what's inside, oh I love that little guy!

Bryce will be joining a soccer team in the springtime that is sponsored through our church. His Uncle Kenny is a soccer pro and great soccer coach, so we bought him a soccer ball that is just his size to practice with.

I think he really liked it. He sat it right on the ground and started dribbling away, zooming all over the place. I was amazed how quickly he just knew what to do. Not touching it with his hands, and not punting it across the room.
He was sure excited to show his little brother Griffin too *winks*

After gifts we were ready for some Hawaiian wedding birthday cake. Ooooh yum!
and a rousing chorus of "Lori, Lori, howdy to ya".... now, to understand this song you have to understand just how very much my sisters and I wanted a little baby sister. I can remember specifically, on a family vacation to Colorado, sitting in the hot tub begging my Mom and Dad to pleeeeaassee have another baby, we'll take care of it and feed it, and change it's diapers and you won't have to do anything! *laughs* I'm not sure how much influence my four year old self had on that decision, but about a year later we had our precious new baby sister Lori.

Often in the evenings of our childhood days Lisa, myself and Julie would have the time of our lives singing along to our Dad playing the guitar. Good old classic songs that I can still remember to this day. Well one night shortly after our sweet baby sister arrived Dad re-wrote the chorus to The Battle Hymn of The Republic and this song was born...

Lori, Lori howdy to ya

Lori, Lori howdy to ya

Lori, Lori howdy to ya..

We're sure glad you're here!

(to the tune of "glory glory hallelujah")

So this year, in lieu of the traditional Happy Birthday to you, we all sang Lori's song. Our sweet brother in laws even chimed right in and caught the lyrics like champs!
We dove right into the cake and wrapped up the evening with lots of laughter and more tales of the good old days. *grins*