When did I become old enough to have a 9 yr old!

Happy 9th Birthday Kelsee!!!!
Wow, where does the time go? I get a reality check on my age when my kids have a birthday and not so much when I do. I feel like I'm still a young hip thing and then I catch a glimpse of myself every now and again driving around a SUV full of carseats and 3 kids and think, "oh yeah, this is my life and I am getting old and maybe the guy in the car next to me wasn't checking me out, but instead thinking, "Look at that lady handing something back to her kids while driving and singing along to Radio Disney!"

Here is a flashback picture of when Kelsee was only 4 weeks old. It is our first family photo. This really made me realize how much I've aged. We look like such babies ourselves.

The night before Kelsee's birthday we planted "doughnut seeds". Kelsee is getting to old to go along with my fun ideas anymore. She kept saying, "Mom are you lying that these are doughnut seeds because they sure look like the apple cinnamon cheerios from the pantry."

In the morning they woke up to find that doughnuts had sprouted for breakfast! A rate treat at my house. I usually make them eat Kashi cereal or something packed with fiber. You can see that Aidan can hardly contain his excitement.

That night Kelsee had cheer practice. She is on the competition team this year and has 3 hours of practice a week plus one Saturday of tumbling a month. She is loving though. We'll see how much I love it when we have to start traveling for competitions.

When she finished we went to Texas Roadhouse for dinner. She wanted steak and to be able to sit on the birthday saddle and scream "Yeehaw" she said.

The next day was her friend party that I tried desperately to get out of doing this year. Anybody who knows me knows that I would much rather take the chaos somewhere else instead of having it all plus the mess at my house, but her heart was set on having a "chef party". So we had 12 screaming girls and lots of food.

Here is a picture of all of them in the aprons I made them. They were so excited that they had their initials in glitter on them! We started off with everyone making their own personal pizza and while they baked we went outside and played a couple of games. After they ate their pizzas I had a little 3 tiered cake for each of them to frost and decorate. When everybody's masterpiece was complete we boxed them up and tied a cute ribbon around them for everybody to take home. She opened presents (6 webkins...she was in heaven) we sang happy birthday and had icecream cones. She had such a blast and thanked me many times for doing it for her.

I can promise this would not have been very fun without the help of so many. Thank you Cheryl for running my errands and picking up the boxes in Salt Lake. Al's sister Emily and her family came down and helped us celebrate. Thank you for the ideas and all the help with the kids. And thank you to my sweet neighbor Michelle for volunteering to help and to Al who is always such a good sport when I get my hairbrained ideas and is always right in there playing with the kids and helping with whatever needs to be done.

Happy Birthday Kelsee, We love you!!!!