Five years old! Hard to believe it of our baby girl. She is old enough to ask that we not call her our baby anymore, but that she will always be. Julia is our happy, smiley, fun loving girl who still shakes when expressing her joy. We love how well you play with your sister and by yourself. This year with your true voice has been a delight even if you found quite a lot of volume. We hope your birthday is a wonderful one!

Birthdays are a great thing to celebrate! We celebrated Daddy’s birthday with morning gifts, afternoon not-so-surprise at Daddy’s work with snacks, evening Mexican food, and soapillias for dessert. There were cupcakes because Julia couldn’t handle the though of a birthday without cupcakes. Daddy enjoyed his day! We will do it again in a year.

We went to Gatlinburg to celebrate Emily’s birthday. Some of Emily’s favorite things include staying in hotels and swimming, and we were able to make both of these happen. The weather was amazing for January and we enjoyed being outside despite a few rain showers that moved through. In addition to swimming, we played putt-putt, visited the aquarium, rode the trolley, walked the strip, shopped, discovered our way through a mirror maze, and rode the skylift. Emily loved discovering that the hotel had hot chocolate and cookies every night. The trip was fun and it was a delight to share the time with Emily and Julia.

Our little swimmers before they made their big leap in. The water was a bit cold so once we got out we didn’t want to get back in.

Daddy was a great sport and swam with the girls until Julia’s lips turned blue.

During the break in the rain shower we got a game of putt-putt in. The girls wanted us to take turns in the order we played. We only got one ball stuck and didn’t lose any of them. We consider this progress with our young golfers. The rules were treated as suggestions and more than once the hole was bracketed with feet to give a sense of success.

Despite our rule bending both girls successfully made hole-in-ones all on their own. This is Julia celebrating her successful hole-in-one. Quite proud! She hit the ball without looking and was holding the putter backwards, but gravity and some good luck was in her favor on the hole. Emily was not to be out done and made a hole-in-one on a later hole.

The six-year-old has some game and some attitude. Funny!

This was how we traveled this weekend. When Julia got tired of walking we gave her a push. Not a bad plan because one afternoon she gave out and slept for over an hour while Emily kept exploring.

Emily’s first visit to the aquarium had a similar photo to this one, but the fish was bigger than she was. She has now grown longer than the fish!

Dude!! We found Crush!

Mama and her birthday girl!

The girls love the fish bowl and Emily still fits in there. I think the only reason they looked at the camera was that the fish swam away.

While Julia napped Robby took Emily up to the top of the mountain on the skylift. Emily was so brave and the heights didn’t faze her in the least.

Checking out! Emily took charge of all of her and Julia’s clothes and special things. Mama loves the efficiency of giving the stuffed animals a ride on the backpack with a view.

What is a birthday without celebrating it with ice cream for dinner? We did offer other food later, but up to this point it was dinner. Yum! We had enough fun we might do this every year.

Emily is officially more than a handful of years now. What a blessing our big girl has been in our lives. We are thankful and grateful for her. She was looking forward to this birthday a lot. We kept teasing her that she could have two years at five and then skip up to seven, but she wasn’t interested.

Her first party of the day was at school. Her class sang to her and made her feel special. Then for lunch Mama ate with her. We shared blue iced cookies with her class. Then that evening we had a family party. She chose to eat Chinese in town for her birthday dinner. Then after dinner we opened gifts and had cupcakes. Her favorite gifts were a Merida dress-up dress and ballet classes.

Her assorted gifts and little mini-Emily figure that comes out every birthday.

We got lucky and were responsible for snacks right before Julia’s birthday at her preschool program. Julia got to pick out her party cupcakes at Sam’s. Picking out your own cupcakes for school is a girl tradition at our house. She happily picked Dora.

This is her holding her breath so she would be ready to blow the candle out.

It is always good to celebrate with your friend.

A table full of little kids enjoying snack time.

Dora celebrating Julia’s 4th!

Julia had several birthday celebrations this year. Because we were going to be traveling on her actual birthday we celebrated her birthday at home a couple of days ahead of time. It seemed fair for her to get her gifts a couple of days early so she could get some playtime with them before she had to be parted from them.

Julia picked her birthday dessert to be monster brownies and to eat at Snappy Tomato for dinner. She enjoyed the attention of the dinner, the food choice, the games we played, eating with her grandparents, and all of her gifts. It is good to turn four!

That is a lot of joy found in hitting a little yellow circle.

Fun and games with our sister.

Driving with our Daddy to help us reach the gas pedal.

Emily taking her turn at driving very seriously!

A great photo of the big sister.

The dessert display – fun faces for the family.

It is a big job to blow the candle out!