The birthday girl's bloopers

The only picture of the day -

taken just after her cupcake was rescued from the kitchen floor!

As anticipated, Eden's birthday wasn't all that we had hoped. Interfering mostly, was a bad cold (which leads to poor eating and sleeping... which leads to a very poor attitude). The day did have 3 very wonderful moments.

1) She awoke to find her gifts in the living room then ran to the top of our stairs and yelled down to Brian and I with much excitement, "Mommy, Daddy, look what I got! Santa came!" She was on cloud nine until about 11am - new toys and books and clothes galore.

Now we'll skip past a bit of crying and at least two temper tantrums to...

2) A picnic lunch at her favorite "Turtle Park". Well, we ate and she climbed and swung and slid and said "watch me do ___ by myself". Brian and I paused with awareness that a year earlier we were not sure this day would come.

There was some more fussiness, a head butt, and a nap, then....

3) Our friends, Mark, Alyssa, and Mackenzie came over at a last minute attempt to save Eden's birthday. Playing with Mackenzie can't cure a cold, but makes most everything else better.

Thanks for all of your birthday wishes. I checked our voicemail this morning to find that Eden had 32 messages! She is such a lucky girl.

We are hoping to have something like this in our back yard soon - our families have pitched in and Eden couldn't be more excited. We would love to have a christening party this Spring with Eden's friends.