Kelli's Birthday!

Kelli turned 5 on May 26th. At our house, we start talking about and planning our birthday parties months before our birthdays. This isn't because I am super organized, its just that the girls always get so excited. For the longest time, Kelli couldn't decide what kind of party she wanted, but she finally decided on a princess party. At first Kelli was going to invite both boys and girls, but then she started telling me what she wanted to do for the party: paint nails, dress up, make necklaces, etc. I know I could probably tweak things and make it work for boys and girls, but we decided to make it easier and just invite girls. The girls all came dressed in their princess ensembles. We played several princess games, made necklaces and bracelets, had a tea party/lunch of course, and then each girl got to decorate her own sugar cookie. (As a side note, I think I've decided to do away with birthday cakes for the kids parties. Most kids don't really like them anyway. Many will scrape the frosting off and eat it then throw the cake away. Look in the garbage can after a party and see what I mean. I'm going to use brownies, rice crispies, cupcakes if they decorate them, and sugar cookies. For now anyway. Sorry, enough of my tangent). The girls had so much fun and the party was just perfect.

We also like having family parties for the girls birthdays because we just really try to make things special for them. For Kelli's party we kept things simple because we were busy then-Memorial Day, end of school, etc. We invited everyone over for dinner and we talked and played games while all the kids played all over. Kelli got tons of cool presents this year and was so excited.

We are so lucky to have Kelli in our family. A friend of our family who she calls "Uncle Blake" said it prefectly when he nicknamed her Sunshine. Kelli almost always has a smile on her face. She really is happy most of the time and it's almost impossible to see her smile and not want to smile too. Kelli loves playing with anyone and anything. She is very kind hearted and it's easy to see why she makes friends so easily. We love you, Kelli!