Happy Birthday Ayden!

W0w, what a weekend. We had a super busy weekend with a lot of family and friends celebrating Ayden's fifth birthday and the blessing of Laela. Ayden turned 5 yesterday but we celebrated on Saturday. She didn't really like the fact that we celebrated her birthday when it wasn't actually her birthday so she preferred to just pretend that her actual birthday was Saturday and we were not really allowed to celebrate much yesterday. Every time I would say something about it being her birthday she would say something like "but Mom remember Saturday was my birthday" through her teeth with that tone of voice that says come on just play along with it. It was kind of hard for me because I wanted to make Monday special too but she just wasn't having it. Oh well. I guess that means she was satisfied with how fun Saturday was even though Monday was a fun day for her too because they celebrated her b-day at preschool and she got to go boating. My parents came into town on Friday and we all just enjoyed hanging out, setting up a new trampoline and eating yummy food. Saturday, Ayden had her last soccer game in the morning and it was fun that her grandparents got to be there and she played great once again. Then Brad's sister Emily, her husband Jeremiah, their two boys, Brad's brother Travis, his wife Becky and their 4 kids all came up from Burley for the weekend for both the birthday and the blessing. Ayden had tons of fun playing with her cousins, playing in the water, playing on the trampoline, opening presents and eating a yummy birthday cake.

Ayden playing in her last game. I think she made 4 goals and she was tough about going up against the bigger boys from the other team.

This is the look on her face after she makes a goal. You can tell she is really proud of herself.

Ayden had a pretty serious look on her face the whole time we all sang happy birthday to her. I guess figuring out what she is going to wish for is serious business.

Ayden opening up the only present she asked for. It was a globe. I thought it was pretty funny that that is what she wanted but she told me that she really wanted to learn things about the earth. She was pretty excited to get it.

She wanted hamburgers and hot dogs for her birthday dinner. Here she is with two of her cousins, Mason and Sydney, and Alex enjoying the nice weather and their diner.

Sitting in the slip n slide pool that my parents surprised the girls with.

And there was a lot of trampoline jumping...

Brad even got in on the fun.

Everyone was pretty exhausted by the end.
Happy birthday Ayden! We love you so much. I can't believe my first baby is five! She really is a special girl. She is sweet, smart, talented, athletic, beautiful, spiritual and much much more. She is a wonderful big sister and an excellent daughter and we are all lucky to have her in our family.

In other news, Laela is doing well. Despite being a super fussy baby she started giving us real smiles at about a month old. This is the only picture we have captured of it so far. We are on the second reflux medicine and it finally seems to be really helping her. The last two days she has been pretty good so I am really hoping we are past the constant pain and screaming. Poor baby.

We blessed Laela on Sunday, but more about that in another post. In the mean time...