Joy-Anna Duggar Takes First Family Road Trip Without Husband Austin Forsyth to Celebrate 27th Birthday

Joy-Anna Duggar Forsyth spent her birthday week with her little ones by her side!

The Counting On star, 27, ventured out on what she called her "first solo road trip with 3 kids" on Wednesday, Oct. 30, while her husband, Austin Forsyth, took part in a hunting outing in Colorado.

Joy-Anna shared the news of the partial family road trip on her Instagram Story, as she posed for a packed-car selfie with kids Gideon, 6, Evelyn, 4, and Gunner, 17 months.

Joy-Anna wrote alongside another snap of her kids that she and friend Gabrielle Patton took their six total children to visit Patton's mother while traveling from Arizona to Texas.

And the festivities didn't stop with the road trip itself. A follow-up upload from Joy-Anna showed a surprise that her friend's family had in store for her: A celebratory birthday pickle with a candle poked through it.

"Woke up on my 27th birthday to this," she wrote, alongside a teary-eyed emoji. "It's their tradition to wake you up on your birthday with a candle in a piece of fruit but they know how much I love pickles 😅."

Later in the day, Joy-Anna also shared a snap of herself out at dinner, holding a plate that was inscribed with a "happy birthday" message, before she explained to her followers why her husband of seven years didn't attend the road trip.

"Missing Austin so much, but he is having the best time in Colorado on his yearly elk hunt," she wrote.

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Joy-Anna's road trip with her kids comes just a few months after her and Austin's youngest child had a health scare over the summer, which left the family "pretty shook up for a while" after the toddler had to be rushed to the hospital.

Back in June, Joy-Anna shared a clip to the family's YouTube channel, noting that Gunner "bit off more than he could chew and immediately started choking" after she fed him a piece of ham.

"I started crying 'cause I'm just like Lord, please protect him, like all of those what-ifs come to your mind right away," she said at the time, before adding that the toddler had been vomiting and was "not breathing for like 20 seconds."

Eventually, after he managed to take a few shallow breaths, Gunner was rushed to a hospital where his X-rays came back clear. "I was just so thankful that God protected him, and we made it to the hospital, and that whatever was in his throat wasn't bothering him anymore," she said.