Happy Birthday Anna Elise!

Anna Elise turned 10 on 10/10.  Pretty cool!  I can't believe we have hit double digits at our house.  She had a fun day.  She was able to quickly open one present in the morning and she chose to have Pop Tarts for breakfast.  Her dad went and ate lunch with her at school and then she was able to open her presents after she got home from school.  She chose to have beef stroganoff for her birthday dinner and we finished off the celebration with a strawberry Barbie cake.

Celeste has been obsessed with birthdays for months.  Every day she tells me "I having my birthday coming up soon".  I have given up arguing with her and I just tell her yes.  "I going to turn 3 on my birthday."  Atleast she has that one right!  I was worried that she was going to be unhappy celebrating somebody else'a birthday when hers is 'coming up soon'.  We started prepping her for Anna Elise's birthday at the beginning of the week and she did great.  No tears or tantrums and was so happy to be celebrating a birthday.  I was relieved! 

Earlier in the month we found some soft curler and rolled Madeline's hair up to see if we could get some curl (unfortunately we tried the new kind of curling iron and although it's better, her hair still won't hold the curl for long).  Anyway, after hours of trying to sleep she gave up and decided that curls weren't worth the pain of sleeping in curlers and out they came.  She woke up with straight hair in the morning.  I hope she learns to like straight hair!

General Conference was a fun weekend. Mike went to the church building for the priesthood session even though he could've watched it at home.  He had to stop and get our traditional Krispy Kreme doughnuts on his way home.  Sunday morning is so exciting for the kids - they love waking up to Halloween doughnuts for breakfast (sure beats homemade granola or mush or oatmeal).  We tried to watch the 'morning' session on Sunday (it starts at noon here) but had technical difficulties so we watched the Saturday afternoon session instead.  Mike and I watched the second session on Sunday alone and in peace.  It was great.  I'm excited to go back and watch the talks that we missed.  I am so thankful for the prophet and our other leaders to give us direction - we live in such a loud and divisive time and it brings such comfort to hear our leaders telling us to stand strong, giving us direction and encouraging us to do better. 

Singing Happy Birthday to Anna Elise - the video camera shut down right before she blew out the candles...

 Opening presents

 

Anna Elise got a large stuffed lion, so the other girls went and got their stuffed animals out.  That's Celeste behind the pink bear.

 

 

Madeline with her curlers and a typical Madeline silly face!