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<\/a><\/p>\nJoel and Nate moved rock and installed a baby gate at the top of the stairs. Then Glen and Linda got there and we had Iowa chops for dinner and spent some quality time together. Heather gave him cake on his real birthday (Monday) morning as well and I kid you not, the munchkin shoved the entire piece into his mouth at one time! Good thing a massive chunk of it broke off before arriving at its destination, lol! It was definitely a different trip this year. Even last year was more “normal” Labor Day weekend with Nate and Heather despite Heather going into labor and giving birth to little E-man! We just didn’t have a lot of quality time with them this year, and that’s ok I guess. There will be other years and other times (prayerfully anyway!). This was E-man’s FIRST birthday for crying out loud! lol. We are back home and to work after a wonderful weekend of good food and even better family! After much debate we decided to fly to Omaha, NE and drive … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","has-meta has-sticky-meta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravaeerickson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravaeerickson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravaeerickson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravaeerickson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravaeerickson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravaeerickson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":358,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravaeerickson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions\/358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravaeerickson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravaeerickson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravaeerickson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nSaturday was the big party day. It did NOT start off well. Friday night we (I say “we” here VERY loosely, i.e. I did nothing lol) put the massive chunks of pork in the crockpots to slowcook overnight. I did not sleep well because I could smell the meat cooking and it bothers me (while I am trying to sleep) for some reason. Heather got up to take care of E-man at 4:00 in the morning and threw out her back putting him back into his crib. He wouldn’t go back to sleep after this, so he was SUPER-crabby all morning and super-tired all through the party. Then our early morning chefs (or first shift chefs) BOTH burned themselves pretty well on their arms.
\nBUT the party went extremely well. Everyone got along and had a good time. And little E-man LOVES him some cake!
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\nHe is VERY protective of it too! LOL<\/p>\n
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\nThe little guy toddles around with his hands up in front of him, so Nate & Heather call it the “drunken zombie walk” and it is too cute!
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\nE-man also ADORES his cousin Travis (at least until he went to leave, and then he tried to pull out all of his hair!). They played and played and E-man hugged and snuggled with Travis. Good thing Travis has a soft spot for him! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"