I love Golden Birthdays. Do you celebrate them? Are you even familiar with them? I have no idea where my knowledge of them came, much less my fascination with them, although I’m guessing that the fact that I had to wait 26 years to celebrate my own may have had something to do with it.

Truth? Even though it was just nine short years ago, I can’t remember how I celebrated my own Golden Birthday. Isn’t that funny? All that hype and anticipation and now I don’t have a blessed clue what we did to mark the big day! But for my kiddos, well, that’s why I blog, now isn’t it? To mark time and serve as the memory keeper of this crew.

And so, today. Today, Lincoln is 4 on the 4th! And I don’t know if you can come up with a much more festive day on which to have a GB than the 4th of July, so we did our best to do it up in style (which included our typical Welschie anti-fireworks approach, just sayin’).

Now, in true Moore Family fashion, we’ve spread the birthday celebrations out over the course of a week or so (I loooooove that my family does this; it means that when my birthday comes, it doesn’t necessarily land on just one day). Last Friday it was a firecracker cookie from Eileen’s; this coming Friday it will be a play date/party with some of his buddies. But today was just the 6 (and counting) of us, hanging out and celebrating our awesome Lincoln Thomas.

We started the morning with donuts and Lincoln’s was, I kid you not, the size of his face and covered in frosting. Hence, candles! I totally grabbed four candles from the cupboard because this (along with some – ahem! – Golden Oreos later in the day) was it for official birthday confections, and I certainly didn’t hear anyone complaining (because his face was covered by a donut!).

The next official activity is actually an EVERY day ALL day event if Linky has any say in the matter, which is to say: baseball! The kid got his very first and very own (and unless Baby No.5 surprises us, will always be his very own) lefty ball glove and oh. my. goodness! He wants to play all the time. He’ll hit. He’ll pitch. He’ll zoom around the bases. He doesn’t care, as long as it is baseball!

In honor of the big day, we made our first trip of the summer to an actual field (instead of our yard or the neighbor’s yard) and the kids had a blast playing their typical Us vs. Daddy game. It was super fun to watch from my folding chair position of 3rd Base Coach (not that any of them listened to me because once they start running, they don’t stop!)!

After we got home and hydrated (and had popsicles – oops – more treats!) we decorated the kids’ bikes and Trumy’s stroller for the annual YWCA Kiddie Parade and then hung out until it was time to actually go to said parade (to melt). We showed up just in time to get in line (and melt) to do a lap and a half through the Fisher Fountain parade route, and then it was time to hustle back home (to try to unmelt) for Trumy’s nap. By the way…can you tell that the mama is not handling the heat so well this summer??

Normal Kindle time and then some water play and more backyard baseball with the neighbors followed, and we thought that was pretty much it until a storm rolled in (from the east – how weird is that?!) and all of the sudden all 6 of us (and counting) were outside playing in the beautiful, pouring rain. The kids ran and splashed and had SUCH a good time, and hey, I figure a shower from Mother Nature is just about as good as anything I can offer to wash off all the birthday treats and sweat from the day, so it really was a perfect ending to a lovely summer birthday celebration.

And now he’s four. For one whooooole year. And I love him, my sweet golden haired, golden smiled boy, more and more each day.