We keep counting up the years on our little one. While she is still our little one, she is not so little anymore. For her 7th birthday her biggest wish was just to spend it with her family. During lunch we celebrated in her class with cupcakes. Then for dinner we met up with all of the Grandparents for a little asian food. There were lots of gifts and even more grins from the happy girl. The birthday was a joy, just like she is. We love you big girl!

Dinner is always fun when you get to watch it being made for you. Julia was not only hungry, but willing to try some new things. She decided shrimp was great. She asked mama if we could have shrimp at home because it was SO good. Mama told her that she didn’t know how to cook shrimp well so it probably wouldn’t happen. Her response was that it looked pretty easy to her after watching the chef do it. 😉 What good answer can a mom give to that one.

When asked what kind of birthday cake/cupcake she wanted it seemed like an easy decision to have a strawberry cake. She doesn’t love chocolate like her mama does. Her favorite color (pink) and favorite fruit (strawberries) come together really well in a strawberry cake.

Now that these Grandparents are now Tennessee Grandparents it is easier to make it to our birthday dinners.

The original Tennessee Grandparents

Hello, Hello Kitty! Julia has quite a family of kitties. Emily gave her a new one. The rest of them had to come out to meet the new friend.

Loving sisters (most of the time)!

Emily wrote a birthday card to Julia. Her advice is priceless! “Dear Julia, I hope you’ve have a great night. So now you are 7 you get a bible and more, but most importantly I want to warn you how much she (mom) makes you help in the house.” Mom had better make sure that happens.

Fall has come and with it comes our littlest’s birthday. This year marks the sixth celebration. Wow! Every year there is such a change, but this year has some of the biggest we have seen. First and foremost is that Julia is a school-girl. Kindergarten has been a joy for her. The second and just as huge is the explosion in communication we hear from her. She asserts herself into any conversation she can, she learned the art of interrupting Emily’s stream of words, she is learning the first sight words, and big words are no longer intimidating. Just yesterday she informed her mama, "you misunderstood what I said". For our late verbal bloomer this is such a big deal!

She loves picking out her own clothes and has learned the love of all things shoes. Her play involves a lot of imaginary play and involves small figures. Her collection of homes, schools, playgrounds, and clinics for the figures continues to grow and brings her delight. School has been incorporated into this play and there is a lot of learning, rules, and lines.

Facial expressions are also a difference between the girls. Emily seems to have her normal mood faces, but Julia has those and more. Taking photos of her is a challenge when she is wanting to pull from the less standard smile face. But on the other hand having a collection of different smiles, pouts, grins, and pure silliness is fun too.

We love our girl for all of her new skills and years we have been blessed to have her with us! Happy Birthday, Julia!

To say that Emily was excited about her birthday would be an understatement. She counted down to the day, picked where we would go and eat, gave her suggestions for gifts, picked her cake design, and put up with her mama’s teasing about not getting gifts. Mama and Julia joined her for a birthday lunch at school. We shared tiny ice cream cones with her class.

She requested a pink butterfly cake. Emily was delighted with the outcome and assisted with the decorating. 

Making her wish.

Julia was excited about Emily’s birthday. One morning on the way to school Mama teased Emily that when you turn a birthday with a seven in it you don’t get gifts that year. It was quite the discussion. Emily didn’t believe it, but she put her heart into the reasons that included gifts in the birthday. Interesting enough Julia never joined in the conversation. She and Mama were about to go and buy her gift for Emily after dropping Emily off, so she knew information to the contrary of what Mama was saying. She is learning a teasing side to life also. After dropping Emily off at school Julia had several comments that she had saved and shared with Mama.

Emily was right, there were gifts! What a fun day we had with all that we did. We love you big girl!

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.

The Mama-made Christmas gift for the girls was to fix up a family hand-me-down bunk doll beds. The beds came from Mama’s aunt and got a fresh coat of paint. Then each bed was given a new mattress, sheet, blanket, pillow, and doll quilt. Emily’s bed was themed with blue material and Julia’s bed was themed with pink material. It is great to be able to pass down things from the past and make them new and fresh with Mama’s touch too.

A bit of the material used in each of the quilts was taken from a Great-Grandma’s quilting box and the sheet material was an old toddler bed sheet also passed down for two generations.

The dolls slide right in.

The idea that they stack and unstack is pretty cool, but in our small house leaving them stacked makes most sense.

The girls got a dollhouse and kitchen this year as their “big” gifts. The dollhouse is a remodeled version of my childhood dollhouse that my Grandparents built and decorated for me. Both girls love their gifts. When they saw the dollhouse for the first time, Julia went running for it and Emily just stopped and stared at it taking it all in. I have loved listening to all of the conversations that have occurred in the dollhouse between it’s inhabitants. There isn’t a piece that hasn’t been inspected, used, and sometimes even repurposed. It has also been an opportunity to learn about sharing.

While we have had kitchen toys and appliances, this new kitchen has been quite a hit. The sink and oven have been a great fascination. It is perfectly sized for Julia and it shows as she has become the master chef. She has been baking lots of cupcakes – she puts on her oven mit, places the tray in the oven, adjusts the temperature, opens the oven, removes the tray (still wearing the oven mit), places candles, and delivers the yummy treats.

I see hours of play hidden in each dollhouse room and in the kitchen appliances. What joy!