7 on the 7th

Rose had a birthday this week! She was extra pleased when she found out it would be her "golden birthday", where her age matches her birth date. I must confess that before this year I had never heard of golden birthdays, probably because my own golden birthday occurred when I turned four. But it is a nifty idea! We did the usual birthday interview and cake/candles the night before, presents first thing on the birthday morning, and family birthday dinner and cake/candles that night. It sounds so simple when I condense it all into one sentence, but the night before Rose's birthday I was feeling utterly exhausted from all of the preparations.

We love our Rose-girl so much! She is so vibrant and vivacious that when she went on her traditional birthday shopping trip with Grandma Leslie on Thursday night, our house felt incredibly still and quiet in her absence! Jeff, Jay, and I are naturally quiet, and wild-child Amber usually follows Rose's lead, so without our Rose, we were a silent bunch. 

The birthday interview. Favorite thing to do with Amber: attack Jay. Hah, that's so true (and so loud).

Seven candles

The many faces of Rose.

Sunset the night before Rose's birthday was fiery.

When I asked Rose what she wanted for her birthday, she said "700 pieces of paper, a timer, and for you to surprise me with balloons in my bed." All of her wishes came true, right down to the kitchen timer of her very own.

The way the balloon surprise works is we wait till the birthday kid falls asleep, then blow up a bunch of balloons and toss them into the sleeping kid's bed. This time we did seven balloons, obviously.

The newest seven year old: bright and early, ready for some presents!

Sunrise on the seventh was birthday-rific.

Birthday hat sisters, waiting for me to eat my toast and call Jeff at work so he could view the present-opening proceedings. (he left on a run to work around 6:30am)

We finally got through to Jeff, who was eating breakfast at his desk in his classroom while Rose opened her gifts.

 Since she was born at 7:19am, we made her wait till then to open presents, muahaha.

Her very own timer!

Amber helped with the opening.

Party hats crack me up.

This Boogie Board drawing thingy is so cool! Amber thought it was an iPad. I assured her that it was not.

The birthday haul: a huge stack of 705 pieces of paper: a ream of 500 white paper, plus a 150-pack of colored paper, plus a 25 pack of cloud patterend paper, and two 15-packs of other pretty papers. It was an arithmetic exercise to find the right number! Also: paints, scissors, glitter glue, sparkle markers, regular markers, silly putty, the Boogie Board, and fresh reading material. Artists are easy to find gifts for!

Birthday dinner with some White family members.

Candles! Rose usually has the most blurry birthday pictures because it's so dark in February. Oh well, I still like this action shot!

Birthday dinner menu: mac and cheese, broccoli, carrots, and blue Jell-o. It was quite a lovely rainbow. This birthday was the first time Rose did not request homemade mac for her dinner, but since she wanted the whole family to come over to eat, I compromised with her to have mac with the masses and then the special homemade white pizza with just our small family. Making pizza is time and labor-intensive and making enough to feed this large crew would have wilted me. I had cub scouts later that night too, so I needed some spark of energy to wrangle eight 8-year-old boys after cooking a massive family meal.

Everyone except me, Aunt Steph, and baby Cole. When I left for cub scouts, I asked Jeff to take a cousin birthday picture before everyone left, but he forgot. So this is it! I ate my dinner standing up.

Grama Leslie takes Rose birthday shopping for a new outfit every year. They went the evening after Rose's birthday and found a cute flowery dress and a unicorn shirt. I love this sweet grama tradition, and Rose does too. They went out for dinner at Five Guys after shopping.

And now for my own birthday tradition: a stroll through the birthday kid's childhood:

My little Valentine.

Baby blessing

Lil' ducky at Mt. St. Helens with her wrist rolls.

My smooshy chubby Rosie! Could she be any juicier?

Ice blue eyes, round round cheeks, and rose-red lips.

Those cheeks! That grin! Her hair was/is so straight, her early pigtails were horizontal.

Those eyes: green-gray-blue. And her intensity has only increased over time. 

Static trampoline hair

Age five going on fifteen.

Rose and Jay: the beginning of a marvelous friendship.

Rose and Amber: the start of another dear friendship.

Happy birthday to our brilliant shining Rose!