we celebrated j's 5th birthday on saturday. here is where i say the cliched , "I can't believe my baby's five!" anyway with that out of the way, i can now go on with my story... we had a secret garden tea party in the backyard. it was by far the funnest and cheapest party we have had yet!!! and that is saying alot because i tend to get a little crazy with birthday parties:) there is just something beautiful to me about organizing a day to celebrate the life of one unique person and i love, love, love to do it well. everyone brought their own tea cup, jaeda's grammy made the beautiful cake, and we played games like pin the flower on the stem and musical chairs. so, all in all, the party was a big hit--jaeda was pleased and overwhelmed with it all:) what a day to celebrate my little wonder--it was perfect. well almost...
just as the party was wrapping up, little olivia--the precious tank of a two year old that spent the summer with us--asked me to take her to the bathroom. so just as we started up the wooden deck stairs she began to scream. i looked down at her foot and saw two splinters the size of a small tree sticking out of the bottom of her little bare foot!!!
holy cwap, as alyssa would say!!!
lynz helped me settle her down and i then attempted to pull the twig out of her baby skin:( it was terrible, terrible, terrible. i was ready to call an ambulance. one piece had managed to puncture the skin and come back out and the other was so deeply furrowed into this little girls foot that i couldn't pull it out by hand--eric finally got it out with pliers!!! OUCH! but she is a tought little cookie and quickly settled down after the splinters had been removed. it was just a few minutes after we removed the tree from her foot that she said, "hey, can i see it?", refering to her boo-boo. wow!
i knew the party was too good to be true! next time we might not go barefoot--that's all.
A little sample of my five year old photo shoot with j. she was so photogenic! what a little beauty she is. so expressive. and full of energy. we had an exciting little adventure that night. we would just pull over on the side of the road where we spotted a bunch of sunflowers and we'd shoot a few poses and then drive down the road a bit to a different sunflowery location. it was fun. i pretty much bribed her with everything i had, but it was worth it! so worth it to have these momentos of her last night as a four year old...she's getting so big so fast. 
