What 29 year old (or anyone for that matter) do you know that gets 4 days of celebration for his Birthday? Mr. Whitaker that's who. The boy is spoiled rotten when it comes to birthdays. It's pretty funny too because we have good friends who are the same way - the wife always throws a big party for her husband every year, but when time rolls around for her birthday it's a very quiet gathering of just their family. How did this happen? Pretty sure it had to do with his parents' anniversary being around the same time so they always felt bad because they would be on a trip, when they returned they always made it up to him by doing several things for his birthday. Seriously? Now the dude still thinks he's a boy and we do the same thing every year.

This year was no different: we started the celebration on Thursday attending the CMA Fest which was AWESOME! We took along several great friends and had a blast. We got to enjoy Alan Jackson, Jason Aldean, Tim McGraw, Lady Antebellum and Carrie Underwood. It was fantastic and yes, Gabbie went too! It was a very late night, but she was quite the little trooper - sleeping in her stroller (aka the smugglin' mobile) in the private bathroom we had. When we got home at 2am, she went right to sleep no problems! What a champ.








We had quite the adventure getting Gabbie into the stadium since they have a no stroller policy. We scouted out the "right" gate attendants and finally found the right group: 4 men who could have cared less that we were about to haul a stroller into the stadium along with about 12 bottles of water and coke in the bottom of our stroller. Lesson: when trying to sneak in items to an event, always find a man as they have made up in their minds that as women all we carry around are pads and tampons and they wouldn't dare to touch or see one. The guy who inspected my diaper bag, literally didn't touch one single item - Brent moved a few things around so he could see we weren't smuggling drugs or weapons. He didn't even inspect our stroller and we GOLDEN.

Alan Jackson
Lady Antebellum

Jason Aldean aka Brent's Bromance

Carrie Underwood


I even managed to smuggle in some cupcakes so at one of the breaks, we all sang Happy Birthday to Brent and chowed down on cupcakes. They were soo yummy:


The Crew:


The next morning, we woke up pretty early and headed to the Lakehouse in Alabama. You may remember a post a long time ago when we recorded the first-ever written directions to the lake house. This is that house again. We always get a kick out of pulling out the directions (which we keep in our car now) that we are the first with written directions.
We had a really really nice time - when we first got there on Friday we were the only ones at the house and pretty much on the lake. It was nap time for Gabbie (very convenient) so we put her down and headed to float away the busyness of the week right out the door on the lake (no worries - we had our video monitor so we could hear and see everything she did). It was amazing. With it being a week day, there wasn't a soul on the water which was nice and weird all at the same time because we've never been there when it wasn't a holiday weekend and the lake was packed.

Saturday the family came down from Hartselle and we had a great time on the boat, floating away all our worries and teaching the dogs how to swim. Well, Fletcher. We strapped on a life jacket and he attempted to learn to swim. It was funny - we're pretty sure he was meant to be a rescue dog because every time one of us jumped off the dock, he was barking and came right in after us.
Fiona didn't really get in the water all weekend - she hung out in the shade on the shoreline


Grandma really wanted to feed Gabbie, so I let her do it....


Jada has a big day coming up: taking her NCLEX aka State Board Exams for Nursing, so we both helped her study some while she was there for the weekend. (good luck, Jada!)



Grandma and I each made Brent a cake for his birthday so we all sang Happy Birthday to him (count: that's TWICE now that he's gotten Happy Birthday Sang to him...)


It was a pretty solid way to celebrate his last birthday in his twenties - so glad to get to spend it with him and all our friends and family!! What a very special husband I have - one I truly adore and thank God for every day. Happy Birthday, babe!


I almost forgot!! Brent's big gift this year was from his parents - an awesome road bike that he's been wanting for several years now. We finally put it together and went on a family ride last night: