This past weekend we celebrated my nephew’s 9th birthday. His birthday is meaningful to our family, because he was born the year we lost mama. God always knows what we need, even before we need it, so two weeks after mama passed, my sister found out she was expecting. He was definitely a little ray of sunshine during a dark year.
This year Ryder had a ‘Spooktacular 9th Birthday’ party. I can totally identify with this type of party since my birthday is October 18th. Mama, every year, would throw me a halloween birthday party, and everyone always loved it. We always had a haunted hayride (my most memorable is when Mr. Mark McElroy hid at an old abandoned house with a jason mask on and a chainsaw and scared the mess out of us…we were probably around 10 lol!) and some years she did a spook house in my dads old shed. One year she also had a shoe box that we stuck our hand in and touched eyeballs, brains, and guts (oh the things you can come up with when it involves food lol). Needless to say, she went above and beyond for my parties and it wasn’t until I was grown that I really realized all the time/effort/money she put into these and really, truly appreciated my birthday parties.
This year, my sister Robin decided to do this same thing for Ryders birthday.


We had mummies, bloody witches fingers, green brains, bloody pb&j’s, witches brooms, and bug juice.


A few of the kids dressed up. Of course there was one little kitty cat that was the cutest around.


Cash is still in his superhero stage, so this was my spider man and ‘mr. bones’. I think Cash still has his costume on he loves it so much lol.

Of course, we had to finish the evening off with a haunted hay ride, just to keep tradition. Erin is a die hard ‘The Walking Dead’ fan, so you can guess which one she is in this picture. She made some pretty good flesh with oatmeal, gelatin, and tissue paper. Who knew?!
What matters the most is that Ryder had a great party with tons of his little friends there. Our family, chaotic as we may be, survived another family gathering without a blow-up (we were on our best behavior since people were present) LOL.
I’m totally kidding….well sort of.