Yesterday our fourth child Riley turned fourteen. Technically he is the middle child, but really he is the baby of the “original four” this is the term the oldest four kids use to define their reign in our home.  Riley was treated as the baby for 8 years before we decided to have 3 more kids, to me he is still the baby. He is also facing his first year home alone without a big sibling, Abby and Hannah will both be leaving for college and he will be the oldest child at home. Our Riley is such a fun and really interesting guy, he has a fabulous heart and his sense of humor keeps us all in stitches. I was touched and surprised yesterday during his birthday party.

Hannah wrote Riley a really clever letter and  gave him a bag of presents that were the keys to the kingdom, the kingdom of Chapple that is. In this letter she offered Riley the “earphones of disappearance.” Apparently unbeknownst to me this is how Hannah has been checking out when she needed to avoid me and the baby siblings. I now know why Hannah is always wearing her ipod and earphones. She offered him the “toblerone” of healing which is still some inside joke I don’t get, and she handed over “the soap and sponge of responsibility” by giving Riley a brand new dish sponge and his very own bottle of dish detergent. The big kids have always done the dishes after dinner. As each child has left for college they have happily left the dishes behind but the dish doer has always had a fellow sibling or team member. Riley is being left alone to do the dishes this year.

Hannah also decorated Riley’s big present with odd little jokes, cut outs, nick names and sayings. We have about ten nick names for Riley I can’t even keep up with them all. When he was little he was little Butchie, Rooness, Roones, Borace the Russian Spy, Riley Roo, and lately the big kids are calling him Chaz, Bro, Bromeo, and yesterday grandpa called him Rosco.

We made homemade pizza that was to die for. Grandma picked up the crust at Wegmans, it’s fresh and you let it rise. I was very skeptical about how good this really was going to be, but I swear it was the best pizza I have ever had. Some of the pizzas were designed with bruschetta instead of sauce, and all of them had fresh tomatoes, and herbs from our garden. The meat lovers pizza had Riley and his friends in heaven. We made 5 huge pizzas and could only eat 3 of them. We also made Riley a huge bowl of his favorite dessert, “dirt.”  This is a ridiculously rich and sweet treat that is Riley’s favorite. It is a mix of cream cheese, vanilla pudding, sugar, cool whip, and layers of crushed oreo. Gummy worms are scattered across the dessert to give it that real dirt feel.

This number one candle has been the candle to adorn all of the birthday treats of late. I think it was Gracie’s. The big kids enjoy using this for some reason. Needless to say yesterday was a great family day. With seven kids we have lots of birthday celebrations. This makes for some great family time in the midst of a very busy wedding season. In addition to the birthday preparations yesterday we processed thousands of stems of flowers for this weeks events. It will be fun to keep up with all that is going on around here this week. Today we have a photo shoot with WeddingWire, and that is in addition to all of the wedding designs we will be creating. BUSY!!!!