Emma's 7th birthday - We love you Peanut!

Seven years ago today Jason and I welcomed a sweet little girl into this world.  I  can't believe that she is seven already.  It seems like only yesterday we brought her home.  She is such a sweet little girl.  She is always thinking about others, especially her siblings.  I haven't met another seven year old who is so willing to give up what they have just to make their siblings happy.  She is so much fun, we especially love her fits of uncontrollable laughter.  She is such a joy to have in our family and we look forward to celebrating many more birthdays with her.

Tonight we opened presents and had cake.  Emma wanted a simple cake this year (thank goodness, I don't know how I would have gotten it done with Leah only being 4 weeks old).  I did a pink and purple cake with blue cotton candy flavored frosting.  She loved it!  Her siblings got her a playdoh ice cream shop set, grandma & grandpa sent her some cute dresses (she LOVES dresses, she is our girly girl) and Jason and I got her a new "big girl" bike.  Tomorrow we are taking her to see the movie Brave and then Friday night we are going bowling as a family.  She is really looking forward to getting to spend the next couple of days celebrating her birthday.  She is also already talking about her next birthday.  She can't wait for her baptism and big birthday party (we only do big parties every four years).  She's already making a list of people and things she would like at her party,  heaven help us.

Happy Birthday Peanut!  We love you to the moon and back!

The cake; the candles were supposed to burn different colors, but they didn't really do what they said they would.  Good thing Emma didn't care. 

 Singing Happy Birthday

 Our big girl!

 Emma and her best friend in the whole world!

Emma loved the colors of her cake and I have to admit it looks like cotton candy to me.

In unrelated news, we had a very good friend of Jason's come and visit us on Sunday and Monday.  Jason served with this wonderful man in Iraq on several occasions.  He had a habit of scaring Jason, now I don't mean just the usual jump out from behind a corner or something, I'm talking serious planning with multiple people involved.  I'm surprised Jason didn't have a heart attack; despite the heart stopping scares, they are still good friends.  On this visit however, Jason was able to get his revenge.  His friend called me up and wanted me to help plan the ultimate scare.  You know how you feel when people pick on your sibling, well that's how I felt.  I'm the only one allowed to mess with Jason.  So I played along with his friend's plan all the while keeping Jason in the loop.  It was supposed to play out like this; Jason would come home from church and his friend would be hiding in the back of the Suburban. I was supposed to get Jason to go get something out of the back and his friend was going to leap out and scare him.  Now it may not sound that bad, but when you add that he was going to film it from three different angles (he actually bought a special head mounted camera for this) so he could e-mail Jason's reaction to all their mutual friends (who usually helped scare Jason), it adds a whole new level of twistedness to it (that's not even a real word, but who cares).  I couldn't let this happen.  So we came up with a way to scare him!

Jason and I played along, me as an active participant and Jason as the ignorant stooge.  All the while Jason and I have decided that we will tell his friend that Jason has a meeting after church and will be gone for awhile, giving us plenty of time to chat and set up.  Sunday arrives and his friend shows up right on time.  I introduce him to the kiddos and give him a tour of the house.  As the kids and I are showing him our room I show him the light in our closet that is having issues (it really is, so I didn't have to make up a false story, soooo good).  Just when I think he won't walk into the closet he does.  He of course is looking up at the light fixture in the ceiling and doesn't notice the ninja dressed completely in black hiding behind my dresses in the closet.  A few seconds after he walks into the dark closet Jason jumps out from behind the clothes and scares the heck out of his friend, I mean the guy was grabbing at his chest.  It was GREAT!  Jason and I laughed so hard.  Finally Jason was the one dishing it out.  I haven't seen him that happy in a while.  It was great fun for us!  Way to go babe, you got him good!


To finish off this post I thought I would end it with pictures of Leah's first bath.  She didn't love it or hate it, it probably would have helped if the water had been a little warmer, but overall not a bad experience.  She is such a cutie!