Shortly after a good friend of ours had graduated with a degree in video game development, his wife got pregnant. . . . Player 3 was entering the game. I thought the theme presented itself naturally and thankfully his wife is a good sport!

I've been selling wedding invitation templates for years now but I hadn't done any printing myself until just recently. A good friend of my mother in law's was in from out of town and in the process of planning her wedding, so we took care of her invitations while she was visiting. She needed 50, and the total cost of paper and envelopes was $6! I knew this process was affordable, but even I was surprised by the total cost of our needed supplies. When you add the cost of the templates and another 50 invitations, you're still under $50! Since I've had lots of questions over the years about the specifics of the process, I decided it's time to lay it all out for the rest of the people out there who are visual learners like me. So here goes. . . .

I love Minecraft. Well, I actually have no idea how to play Minecraft or even what a player's end-game is when playing Minecraft (To build the most houses? To acquire the most stuff? To not get killed by the exploding green guys?). Frankly, the game eludes me. But I love the way my kids play Minecraft together. I really should capture it one of these days, because when they're having one of their good moments (for example, Robby helping Jocelyn build her house, or Jocelyn saving Robby from getting killed), I stop whatever I'm doing, and I enjoy it. I bask in that moment just relishing that my kids *sometimes* are so good to and for one another. And more of those moments occur while playing Minecraft than in any other venue. So I love Minecraft. Everybody was game for a Minecraft birthday party for the year of 9 and 7.

The year of six and eight was the beach - primarily because this was our first birthday party with a pool in the backyard so it seemed fitting for the water to be the focal point. We had beach-themed invitations, a beach umbrella toothpic wreath, beach ball garland, a photo booth, gummy worm skewers, a bubble bar, and lots of other good stuff!