Happy Birthday Miss Hayley!

I'm playing a little catch-up on a few events that occurred in October!  I guess working more hours at my job in addition to coaching JV swimming at the local high school really took a toll on me.  Well, I could not let the month pass by without documenting Hayley's 14th birthday.  Because I was so busy, and the fact that we are trying to watch our pennies lately, I had been trying to convince her to just have a family birthday celebration.  She was a good sport and went along with the idea, but I knew that deep down she really wanted to have a party with a few of her friends so I decided to try to pull off a surprise party.  It was awesome and she was definitely surprised and overwhelmed with emotion!  Here are some pics that captured the evening.

We went to the local Japanese restaurant for what she thought was just going to be our family birthday celebration.  Here she is doing the birthday dance while the wait staff was singing and banging the drums.

Once dinner ended it was still too early to go home, so we walked down to the local coffee house for her B-I-G gift.  She has been wanting a really nice camera and we were able to get one at a steal (she contributed for half of it)!

The look of surprise when she realized what she just got!

She was so overwhelmed that the tears started a few seconds later... :)

Cute pic of the kiddos.

Once we got home we sent Hayley upstairs.  Half of her friends were hiding in her closet waiting to jump out and surprise her.  She looks like she's upset in this photo, but really she was just crying from happiness (her words...).  She truly didn't expect anything after her family dinner celebration.

Then she went into another room and the rest of her friends jumped out and surprised her again!  So, there were more tears of joy from Miss Hay...

Sarah, Matt, Maddi, Harrison, Maddy, Hailey, Gabby, Hayley, and Savannah

Blowing out her birthday candles.  The cake was another surprise for her.  She had been asking me a few days prior to her birthday what kind of cake I was going to make her and I asked her if she'd mind if we just picked up an ice cream cake.  I usually always make homemade cakes, so I knew she was disappointed at my response, but she was trying to roll with it because she knew that I had been so busy.  She loved the rainbow layer cake!  Anyway, the evening was full of surprises and her 14th birthday will be one that she won't soon forget!