Hazel Turns 5!

I'll spare you all the "where has the time gone" rant as I try to reconcile in my mind how on earth my baby girl turned 5 years old yesterday. But trust me, I've been thinking it.

She was pretty excited for her birthday this year. A couple of weeks ago, Jacob helped her make a birthday chain. It was interesting to learn she's about as good as her mother at daily countdown stuff. We had to adjust the chain a time or two to keep it on track as she would forget for several days at a time. But especially the last week or so, she was really excited to take a link off her chain each morning.

The first words out of her mouth was "It's my birthday! Hooray!" It made me happy to see her so excited. Sticking with our family tradition, she was exempt from chores on her birthday, so I did her laundry and put the dishes away. Speed was NOT happy. But he liked the idea that he'll get out of it on his birthday. We'll see if he remembers it then anyway. :-)

She spent most of the day just relaxing and playing and trying to sneak peeks at her cake as I was decorating it. I still have a hand cramp from that one. I might have to give up the whole cake-decorating bit of the birthday celebration if my kids keep picking such hard pictures. I was pretty pleased with the result even if I was having muscle spasms in my thumb for several hours afterwards. (No, seriously - ask Jacob - it was creepy looking.)

We decided to have our family party early (4pm) due to some extended family constraints, but I ended up liking that much more. Our family generally only eats 2 meals a day, especially when it's warm, so we already had dinner at 2pm and then there was still lots of time after everyone left for Hazel to play with her new toys and let the sugar rush subside.

Here's some lovely pictures:

And here's one part of the present opening - she had many similar reactions, but this one was the best:

She had a great day and continued to tell me today how much she loved her presents. I sure do love my Hazel-girl.