Favorites From Her Birthday

We celebrated Gwen's birthday at home last night with a simple, yummy dinner of homemade chicken soup, bread & butter, and cucumbers and tomatoes, with a pudding pie for dessert. I really like this photo Scott took of the kids and I before Gwen blew out the candle on her pie~ nice composition, with our faces all close together and the glow of the candle in front. I liked it even better once I switched it to black and white.Thought this one of Gwen and Caleb together was really sweet... both looking the same direction, his arm around her. Cute how she is brushing the hair away from her face with her finger, too.
We have a tradition at birthdays of hiding the gifts and playing "hot or cold" for the birthday person to find them. Gwen needed a big boost from Caleb to retrieve this gift from its hiding place up high!
Gwen was genuinely pleased with her gifts, exclaiming over each one. Love that look on her face in this picture! This miniature shopping cart from Seth and Madelyn had tiny packages in it, each filled with candies. What could be more exciting than that?
One of Caleb's gifts to Gwen was a real red lip gloss, which she put to use right away. How does she know how to apply it so expertly? I loved this photo in B&W also, but it seemed a shame to miss the bright red of the lip gloss and her bow, so I kept in in color.

Life Goes On...

I served fruit for Gwen's birthday breakfast this morning in the beautiful cut glass bowl that my 101 year old grandma was baptized in as an infant on Kaskaskia Island...

School Birthday Party

This morning was Gwen's school party. Her teacher does such a great job of making birthdays special, with a crown, throne, birthday song, gift and games to celebrate. The birthday child is encouraged to bring a little treat in for all their classmates, so Gwen put together small containers of candies for everyone that she and I chose from the bulk section at Carrefour.

Madelyn and I took in this kitty birthday cake that I managed to put together after 10 PM last night. As I was trying to figure out what to do for her cake, I remembered a post I wrote a few years ago on Caleb's birthday, about what a big deal his first friend birthday party was. I drove all over town hunting down special red food coloring to make the fire engine frosting a true red color... hmmm. Things seem a bit simpler now that I know that as long as the cake tastes reasonably good, it will be fine for kids. :-) It was fun because Caleb hung around the kitchen with me while I made Gwen's cake last night, so he and I talked about my evolution into a mom that is getting better about not stressing over things like birthday cake. I was actually please with how this little kitty turned out. I think the satin bow on her ear made the look!

Cutting the kitty cake to share with everyone.

Reading the Chinese characters with her teacher on the big birthday card from the class.

A game of "Freeze Dance"! Gwen was so pleased to have Madelyn participating.

Gwen's actual birthday is Sunday... can't believe how she is growing up!