Happy Unbirthday to Anna

Anna's birthday is in March. Less than a month after Jon passed away, Anna had her 8th birthday. I was in no frame of mind to plan and execute a party. Sweetly, Anna understood this and agreed to wait till summer when things were less stressful. Sadly, they weren't much less stressful and I talked her into waiting some more. Normally, Anna is not a patient child, but for whatever reason, she was patient in this situation. Embarrassingly, I found myself a year later, making excuses to wait until summer for Anna's 9th birthday party. Summer came and went. Finally, I was just embarrassed of myself and decided to make something happy for Anna's birthday, even though it meant doing it in September, 6 months after I postponed her second year of parties.

One Friday night in September, Anna, along with two of her close friends from school, her little sister, her cousin and myself, headed to Pearland for an evening of unbirthday fun. Where was Brennan you ask? He was with his Nana, sick with the flu. Poor baby, but how could I have postponed again? The show had to go on.

Our first stop was the food court. The girls couldn't have possibly chosen the same restaurants, right? That would have made life too easy for me...haha. But it was okay, I certainly didn't mind and they enjoyed eating, visiting and playing together.

Quick meal and then it was off to the main event...RIDEMAKERZ! If you know about Build-A-Bear, you can grasp the idea of Ridemakerz. This very cool store, is a place where you go and get to Build-A-Car. The girls had a fabulous time picking out their make, model, color of car, wheels, and rims. After that, they started putting the cars together. When the cars were all put together and the remote controls had been added in, the girls decorated their cars with stickers. Once stickers were added, there were 5 newly made cars zooming around the store as I was checking out. All I could think about was how much fun Brennan would have had and I determined right then that I would be bringing him back as soon as he was feeling up to it. I toyed with the idea of just putting a car together for him, but making it is more than half the fun. I couldn't take that away from him.

From Ridemakerz, we all headed to the food court for some Dip-N-Dots. Only one of the girls chose birthday cake as their flavor, but they all had a taste of that one. Again, there was more visiting, eating and playing around, along with a mess or two.

By this time, the mall was winding down and it was time for us to head out. Before heading back home, we had to stop off at my sister's house to drop off my niece. The girls were chopping at the bit to drive their cars some more, so I parked in a court close to my sister's house and gave them about 5 or 10 minutes to drive them underneath the street lights. There was so much squealing and giggling that I thought the neighbors might be irritated with us, but there weren't any complaints.

We loaded back up and headed home. The guests were all going to spend the night, but when we found out Brennan had the flu, we chose not to share that love. All the girls got dropped back home and my girls and I rushed over to pick up Brennan. I brought him a key and told him about my plans to take him there as soon as he was feeling better. His response..."I feel better right now!" Again, poor baby, but his sisters were sweet enough to allow him a ton of driving time with their new Ridemakerz cars.

Isn't it still true that it's better late than never? Happy Unbirthday to Anna!