Makenzie's birthday party

Today after church, we had Makenzie's family birthday party. We ate taco lasagna (one of our all-time favorites!), then Makenzie opened her gifts:





She has to wait until her actual birthday on Tuesday to get her gifts from her parents and brothers (I'm just mean that way :-). After gifts, we had birthday cake. I made this BEAUTIFUL (if I do say so myself -- and I'm only saying it because I'm amazed that it turned out) ice cream cake:



We all thought it was even better than Baskin Robbins' ice cream cakes -- me because I could eat it since I made it gluten-free, everyone else because I used whipped cream instead of frosting and this family prefers whipped cream. So we were all happy with today's sugar intake :-)

Poor Joel, though, was not happy because he has been sick for over a week. He feels nauseated all the time, but has no fever and never vomits. We're thinking he might have developed an intolerance for dairy products. If this is the cause of his nausea, I will personally be glad because it's easy to fix. He's not so happy, but he's old enough to think logically that it's better to know the cause so that we can take care of it.

At the beginning of the year, I set a goal for myself to post on my blog every single day this year with a picture and an encouraging or challenging song. I failed at that goal yesterday because I had a KILLER headache. I barely made it from the door to my bed without barfing from the migraine. There was a big mix yesterday of stress and weather conditions that my poor little brain just couldn't handle. Thank God I'm better now! Being incapacitated is not conducive to motherhood!!!

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today's song: "Love Without Limits" by Natalie Grant

He loves without limits,
Sees us every minute
Wherever we're walking,
He's near.