Happy Birthday Big Girl!

I cannot believe the years fly by so quickly, in this house.. especially when the minutes seem to crawl by.

This past weekend we celebreated E's 8th birthday. To avoid the chaos of last years party, we substantially cut the guest list down from 20+ kids to only five, and had all the grandparents and aunties and uncles go out with us for a brunch the next day.

It was a lovely quiet party. (relative to the other crazy ones anyways). At one point, my husband and my sister and I were standing in the kitchen listening to classical music, sipping wine and eating appetizers. It was lovely :-)

The girls had fun running around sneaking up on the grownups, playing a string game, doing some crafts and eating cake. E enjoyed all of her gifts, and was a lovely hostess, politely thanking each guest and giving out many generous smiles. All enjoyed themselves.

E even decorated her own cake this year!! She was pretty determined to do it all by herslef, so I just spread a base layer of white icing on the cake, and she did the rest herself. She wanted a unicorn (an impressive feat!) and did all the writing herself, except for the word Birthday which was too long, so I squeezed it in for her. Do you like it?

The climax of the party was when the cake was brought out glowing with candles, and placed in front of the birthday girl. The guests were singing, E's eyes were sparkling with the candle light and she was just working out a strategy to blow them all out, when from out of nowhere her little sister dashed in. With one quick Whoosh, she extinguished all the candles at once, and erupted into cackles of laughter on the floor.

After she was properly disciplined (while trying not to burst out in laughter ourselves), the candles were relight and E gracefully finished her moment in the spotlight.

The next day, we went to a gluten free restaurant for brunch with the family and terrorized the place with our big brood of kids :-) It was a lovely weekend!