A butterfly birthday

Sweet Lila Lou turned seven a few weeks ago. She was very excited about her birthday this year. A few days prior she gave me the step-by-step on how she wanted to be surprised (it involved all of us hiding and then jumping out at yelling SURPRISE- glad she walked me through it). Since the girl loves a donut, I thought eating 14 of them was an appropriate way to start the day. 

 She requested that we swim, of course. We took the kids to a public pool and enjoyed the wide array of redneck tattoos. I saw one other person there who did not have a tattoo. It was Braden.

These girls are besties.

This girl is crazy

Anabelle went on the big slides by herself all day.

Then we went to Steak n Shake and ate 'bugers' and Lila let Elise have the cherry on her birthday ice cream. And then she let her have her ice cream.

Edible butterflies. Amazon literally has e v e r y t h i n g that lazy people could ever need. 

She loved it of course.

She loved being sung to. My favorite part was her thanking us for singing to her before she even blew out the candles.

Loving her birthday cards

And presents from grandparents

Worst/best baby face in my parenting career. 

Whew, that's better.

Elise doing the thing that she does where she removes her diaper (somewhere), puts on panties (sideways and inside out), and then runs around the house until she has to pee. Or worse. On the floor. I don't love it. And if you ever eat at my house I'm sure this picture will be stuck in your mind. I Clorox regularly for just this reason. 

Balance board from Grandma

When asked what she wanted for her birthday she said " a REAL butterfly". Few things feel as good as literally making a wish come true. Thanks again to Amazon! She got five caterpillars so she could watch the whole transformation occur. We asked her if she wanted to name them. Without a moments hesitation she spouted  off "Rose, Diana, Achey, John, Cocoa". It was as if she had waited her entire life to name five butterflies. 

We got her a book called "The Book With no Pictures". I hoped she would think it was funny. Her reaction blew my hopes out of the water. She belly laughed happiness throughout our whole house. After that night she went to bed with it every night for a month. She read it to every one all day. She had it memorized in no time. It was a hit. The down side was Elise shouting "BOO BOO BUTT!" in sacrament meeting as a result of the frequent readings. A small price to pay I suppose for the love of literature. 

I loved celebrating Lila and all the love she brings to our family.