Soleil's Birthday

Soleil turned 6 today!  We're so happy she is part of our family and are blessed with her sweet, kind influence in our home every day.  She also, however, can be just a little...ummm, shall we say, direct about her expectations.

As per her usual arrangement, she laid out her thoughts about what should be done on her birthday so that her happiness on that day was maximized.  For her family activity (which we always do for the kids on the non-party years), she chose for us to go for the recently released Cars 2 movie.  We actually went and saw it on opening night (afternoon), and had a great time.  None of us had ever seen a movie in 3D (except for Rhett), so we decided to see the 3D version.  It was really cool, except, of course, that we looked like a bunch of poindexters with those glasses on.  I was especially interested to see Jesse's reaction, so kept a close eye on him out of the corner of my eye.  As soon as the 3D previews came on, I glanced over at him.  It was hilarious.  He immediately lifted his glasses to see if the bird in the Lion King preview was actually right in front of him.  Then he let the glasses come back down.  No sooner were they down, however, than they were right back up.  It was like that for the next 10 or 15 minutes until he got used to it.  Talk about a crack up.  Of course, I can't laugh too hard, because I was doing the same thing.

Soleil's Treasure Hunt Clues

Breakfast in Bed

After we got home, we got the kids to bed and Ang began her usual ritual of getting the morning treasure hunt set up (that's a morning tradition for birthdays in our house).  For Soleil's treasure hunt, she had to punch out paper (see right) to reveal the clues hidden in the cups glued to her birthday poster.  These clues then led her and her brothers on a wild chase around the house and in the yard to find the various gifts.  It was a lot of fun, and she had a great time with it.  Then, of course, came breakfast in bed--our bed--because you can't watch a movie from her bed.  She loved every minute of being waited on.  Then she and Ang went to the mall to get her portraits done (it's been forever since we've had any of the kids done, and will be doing the boys in the next few weeks as well).  The pictures turned out so nice.  Ang was beside herself with pride when she came back and showed a few of them to me.  Unfortunately, we have to wait a few weeks for all of them to come back.  We'll post a few when we get them.

We wound up the day with a big game of trampoline basketball with Noah Barros, Zach Whittacre, Rhett, me and Soleil.  Jesse, Isaac Barros, and Lyric Barros were occasional participants, but they found funner things to do.  The biggest crackup was that Soleil, who is about 3'8" tall and weighs about 38 pounds kept telling us, as we were setting up teams, that it should be her against the four of us because "that's fair."  Did I mention that she is VERY confident.

Finally, it was time for the cupcakes, candles, and wishes.  It was a great day, and a nice opportunity for us to remind one of our three sweet kids how important a part of our family she is.  They certainly all are, and I don't know what we'd do without any of them.  As you can see, the day wore her out.  Actually, it wore them all out.  They boys were asleep before she was.