"Super" birthday weekend

My birthday was last weekend. It was especially "super" because it was Super Bowl Sunday! But we didn't start the celebration then. Nope! MaSha came over to babysit the boys and Thomas and I went out on a little dinner date on Saturday night! We first had a drink or two at Chicora Alley, then walked a few doors down for dinner at Pomegranate on Main. It was a fun night out on the town and dinner was delicious!

Thomas and me at Pomegranate

Sunday morning, Thomas let me sleep in! But let's be honest. There's not much true "sleeping in" going on anymore, but it felt awesome to just be LAZY! I didn't get out of bed until around 9. Two words: glorious & amazing. I need to do that more often! Thomas got the boys up, changed, clothed and fed. He even got 2 thumbs up on outfit choice. Coincidentally, they boys and I were all wearing puffy vests. I guess we were puffy vest quadruplets! Then we went to church.

Post-church, pre-lunch photo opp!

That afternoon, we had a little Super Bowl pre-party. Our friends Steph and Clark and baby Ava Lane and Heather and Walker with baby Caroline all came over. We had planned this a few weeks back because it had been a while since we'd all gotten together and we really wanted to do a little play date so all the littles could hang out together. We decided to do it from 3 - 6 and just do some easy appetizers. The game began at 6:30, but it's hard to have little kids out and about in the evening when they have an early bedtime (and some of these kids may be currently sleep training)!

I knew Thomas would get some sort of dessert to celebrate my birthday, but was surprised to have gifts and balloons from my girlfriends! Very festive!!

We were pretty much Carolina Panthers fans for the game since the Panthers are technically our home town team (they cover both of the Carolinas - even though they're based in Charlotte, they do training camps in Spartanburg and actually originally played their games in Clemson's stadium). So we dressed in Panthers colors; I couldn't find decent Panthers shirts before the game. And I pulled out our Panthers colored dishes for the food....but Thomas is a HUGE Peyton Manning fan (and has been since Peyton was QB at Tennessee in the 1990s) and we all pretty much love Peyton, so we had a little Broncos love, too. We decided before the game that we would be happy with either outcome.

Super Bowl apps and birthday balloons!

See the Broncos love? Orange bowl and some orange napkins :)

Heather and Caroline - and their
adorable matching monogrammed vests!

Steph and Ava Lane

Stokes sitting with climbing on Uncle Clark

Steph, Heather and Ava Lane

Girlfriends with our babies (I'm missing 2 babies but that's ok)

Ryan and Caroline were playing together

Sweet Mama and sweet girl!

Ryan and Ava Lane
You can't tell so much, but Ryan was just laughing and smiling!
#LadiesMan

Caroline cruising with William

Kiddos with birthday hats and me

Never a dull moment - trying to hold Caroline up
and simultaneously fix William's hat that had fallen off

Little impromptu nap -
she was a sleeping angel!
And can you stand those cheeks?!?!?

Resident fashion plate - Stokes (wearing Caroline's vest)

Birthday gift! Almost too pretty to open!

Special martini glass, a book, and a card for "HRH Princess
Katharine" - that's me, Her Royal  Highness! ;)

Blowing out my candle!

Delicious Birthday Cookie Cake from The Chocolate Shoppe!
Seriously, THE BEST.
I love how it says "Katie - slash - Mama" heehee

Heather and Caroline with C's new
birthday presents from Auntie Steph!

The Mays family, just chillin'

We did  make a point to put all the kids together and try to get a decent picture of all of them. This is really cool and something I mentioned to the girls. These are their "family friends". We will hopefully have lot of pictures of them together throughout the years. So you know how you have those people in your life that your parents are friends with their parents and you kind of grow up together? I think this is the beginning of that! How cool and special is that? We are very lucky to have such awesome friends with sweet kiddos.

These are the best 3 of the kid pictures!

Stokes, William, Ava Lane, Ryan and Caroline

Stokes loves his cars, William is excited for the game, Ava Lane
thinks Ryan is cute, Ryan's thrilled with the attention
and Caroline is so over taking pictures! ha!

William: TOUCHDOWN!

Sweet moment!

I love this! William was touching Ava Lane and
she's reaching out for Ryan!

Checking out the football.
Aren't they adorable??

Awesome friends!!!
Steph, Heather and me

William was macking on Ava Lane

Look at those rolls!
I could eat her up!

The boys!
Walker and Stokes, Clark and Ryan, and
Thomas and William

Ryan with his Mama

Our friends all left before the game started and we ended up putting the boys down for bed a little before halftime started. The game was a little bit of a snoozer (and pretty sloppy), but the commercials were pretty good. I liked the ones about the Super Bowl Babies. I also like the controversial Doritos commercial because it shows one of the products that I represent! In case you're wondering, the monitor that the ultrasound is on is an Elo monitor - and you can even see the logo - and they're a vendor of mine! They were excited to be showcased in such a primetime spot and we even voted on this commercial to win a Doritos contest to be shown during the Super Bowl.

Anyway, I was a little bit sad that the Panthers didn't win, but was glad for Peyton Manning and his team. Overall, it was a great birthday, spent with our good friends, our kids and football - what could be better?