Mothers are strange kinds of humans

After Alli's birthday dinner last Monday, the rest of the week was spent preparing for her party with her friends last Friday. My friend has an embroidery machine, and I thought it would be a great idea to embroider purses for all the little girls attending. So I spent five hours on Wednesday cutting out the fabric and embroidering names on it. Side note: Taya was not removed from her car seat this whole time, and never even cried. She is seriously the world's best baby, and contrary to the way she looks, the girl never eats. Then I spent another three hours on Thursday trying to get my sewing machine to work to sew them together, and another three hours on Friday watching my mom sew them together on her machine. Through this all I thought to myself: mothers are insane! Why would anyone spend this much time making silk dress up purses for five year olds? And yet I was happy to do it, and I'm sure I will continue to do crazy things for my girls because I love them.

The party was a blast. Everyone came dressed up (of course). We decorated jewlery boxes that I had painted previously. We had parfaits. We danced to the Tinkerbell soundtrack. We tried to play musical chairs, but there were too many tears, so we refrained from removing the chairs, and the girls each just sat down when the music stopped. It worked much better when nobody was "out". And of course the girls loved the silk purses with their names on them. I haven't put the pictures on the computer yet, so they'll come later.

My friend embroidered Alli a little apron that said, "Happily Ever Alli". It is so perfect for her. After the party she asked if we could make a countdown chart for next year's birthday. I said NO. It's time to wind down from the birthday scene.

Fancy Alli Turns Five

Monday, February 23rd was Alli's fifth birthday. I have never seen anyone so excited about a birthday before. On February 1st we had to make a countdown calendar on which she could mark the days off one by one until the 23rd. She made plans for her birthday at the beginning of the month, and then she would go over them with me everyday. On Sunday her primary teacher asked her what she was going to do for her birthday, and she launched into a five minute long exciting list of everything she was going to do. So here are the photos of Monday's celebration.

There is a children's book titled "Fancy Nancy" which is a favorite at our house. You should read it, and then Alli's fancy party will make more sense. Anyway, we all dressed up and went to dinner at Friendly's. We wore boas and hats and held our pinkies up and called each other "darling". Alli said when we walked in everyone thought we were movie stars. I only wish Aunt Kristi had been here to do the girl's hair. Alli loved every minute of it. She is a very fancy girl at heart.

"Yesterday I was four. Today I am five. Next year I'll be twenty." -Alli

My Grandma really is fancy Nancy.

Even baby Taya got dressed up for the party.

I have the fanciest little family ever.

After our fancy dinner party we came back to Grandma's house for presents and chocolate cake. It took Alli about fifty blows to get her five candles out. We were really glad we did not purchase trick candles. Our baby is five. Wasn't she just born yesterday?