Happy 8th Birthday to Emily!

It is always fun to celebrate this special birthday. My Mom and Dad come out for the baptism and we are able to do them right near (or even on) their birthday so it is extra special. Emily's birthday fell on a Saturday, which would normally be perfect. Unfortunately, Kevin had to work until 7 pm, so the baptism and birthday celebrations were moved to Sunday - he had that day off! We did have the ice cream and pancake breakfast on her birthday, and I remembered the balloons, too!

We enjoyed working together outside - the usual, splitting and stacking wood - but with extra adult hands we got quite a bit of work done. My Mom worked for a little while in the garden but it was already in the sunshine so it was too hot. Other than that we just kind of hung out.

Sunday was nice. The baptism wasn't right after Church so we just hung out, at some lunch that we had brought and waited until 2:30. Emily had invited a couple neighbors and some showed up! It was so nice to share this with them. The program was nice, the baptism was special, but I kept forgetting that I had things to do - like offer the opening prayer, be ready to give Emily a towel, you know the Mommy type things. She was dressed quickly and we took before and after pictures.

We went home for dinner and then Grandma and Grandpa Nichols showed up with the cake - a horse! Well, the head of a horse. It was really cute, of course. She had a bit of trouble blowing out the candles and she made some strange looks through out the presents, so if she looks weird in the pictures, that's just the way she was being. She was excited to get all the things she asked for: remote controlled car, construction paper, scissors, glue sticks, colored pencils, Nerf gun (Nichols). And she even got some things she didn't ask for: Lego set, 2 small cross stich projects to work on with her Mom.