Hannah's 4th Birthday

July 11th and 16th, 2011 Post:

On the morning of Hannah's 4th birthday on July 11th she woke up to her big gift....a brand new bicycle! It's her first 2-wheeler and the minute she test-drove one in Walmart she took off down the isles. We didn't even have to show her what to do. Our big girl!

After our day at the aquarium (see the previous TN Aquarium post) on her actual birthDAY Daddy blew up the waterslide in the backyard. What a full day of fun we had!


On Saturday, July 16th we had Hannah's big 4 year old Princess Party. She chose that theme (not that I had any doubts as to what she would choose). She also said she wanted all the princesses on her decorations, meaning Belle, Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Ariel.
On the menu was Princess pizza, chips and dip, Princess krispy treats, Princess castle cake, and ice cream. We had Hannah's favorite pink lemonade to drink.



The birthday girl blowing out her candles

This girl loves her lemonade

Opening her fun gifts with cousin Gabe

Our tradition- a picture with the birthday banner (we forgot to do it before Hudson went down for a nap)

After eating and opening presents the kids had lots of fun jumping in the inflatable jumpy castle and beating the heat on the waterslide. Hannah was a little tired and tends to step back and not get too involved when a crowd of kids are all over one thing. She had lots of fun though.

Here she is playing with one of her favorite gifts-a pinkalicious cupcake set- after the party was over.

What a wonderful party we had. We had lots of family travel a long way to be here too. We are so thankful to have so much family and so many old and new friends that love us. We feel so blessed! Hannah is one loved little girl!

It's exciting, yet a little sad to look at her face and see no baby features left. When I look at her now I see the young girl she is becoming. She is the most amazing little girl. I love her silliness and her silly voices and made-up songs, silly faces, and funny dances she does to make others laugh. I love her mind and how she thinks. She is so smart and reasons things and figures things out so methodically and fast. She is reading some, writing anything, cutting like a big kid, drawing, counting, and even doing some math in her head. She just does things without us even showing her. She surprises us almost every day with something new she has learned all by herself. I also love her understanding and easy-to-please nature. She is unpicky with things given to her and is such a good sport when she can't have something that other kids are having because of her peanut allergy. This actually comes up a lot more often than most would think. She just asks if she can have it, and when we have to tell her "no" she just says "okay." We always try to have something else she loves to offer her. It's so sad, but she is just so sweet about it. I have been so impressed by her adjustment with our recent move. We had to leave all of her little friends she's pretty much known since birth to move here and, though there are a few girls her age at our church here, it has been a tough adjustment. She's the "new girl" and with her shy nature it's been really hard to build real friendships with them. Even with some tough times of being left out and having her feelings hurt, she has just loved the other children and smiled and shown excitement to play with whoever will play with her. I love that about her! She really does love to play with whoever is willing and has a good time with whoever that is.

There is so much more to love. I love that she loves to sing and gets into a song and sings with much enthusiasm (until she sees me watching her, then gets all shy and puts her hand over her mouth and laughs). I love that she opens her mouth as wide as possible when she laughs as if to exaggerate her happiness. I love her flexibility and ease with new places, situations, or schedules. I love how she cares for her things and other people. I love how she loves to create and build things rather than play or color the way that most other people do....like how she colors people and things as colorful as possible even though she knows that people are flesh colors, elephants are gray, or dogs aren't really purple and green. The other day she colored a little boy and colored his clothes in as many colors as she could fit on him, his hands orange, and his face black. I love that she sees colors and thinks outside the box. I will do all that I can to nuture that in her. She's also a bit of a perfectionist with some things though. She wants things folded a certain way or lined up a certain way, but is always open to suggestion if given another fun idea.

I could go on and on and on and on about how special our girl is, but I'll stop there...for now. We are so thankful that God gave us this special little girl to raise and pray every day that we model Jesus for her. She certainly teaches us about HIM in so many ways. My, how we love this girl!