She's nine!

Before I begin my narrative of the day, let's take a look at a super sweet birthday girl

And another one:

The night before Kami turned four or five, Shawn and  I snuck into her room after she had gone to sleep, and hung balloons all over her ceiling.  Since that time, if we remember to get some balloons before the big day, we do something with them the night before.

Maddie is a very light sleeper, so we didn't bother putting any in her bed room.  Instead, we threw some into the living room and when she came down the next morning for scriptures, there they were!

Shawn and I and the two little boys brought cupcakes to her at school, and then her plans after school were to have a weinie roast out across the pond:

Love this pict. of Caden.  Usually he won't let his personality show on camera:)

But this is a better picture of Mads

After dinner we went into the house for birthday cake.  Maddie wanted a lady bug cake, and wanted us to make it together.  Our red food coloring had dried out, so we headed to the store to get some more.  Along the way she admitted  all sorts of naughty stories about herself.  My favorite is that when she is into a good book she can't fall asleep at night for thinking about it and wondering what will happen next, so she sneakily reads it until it is finished.   I asked her how she gets away with it with us checking on them before we go to bed and what-not, and she said that she pretends to be fast asleep whenever she hears someone on the stairs!  She admitted that she's pretty grouchy the next day, but no one's the wiser. :)  She has become quite the little book worm, and sometimes, when I notice that she has just finished a book, I have to tell her not to start another one for at least another day so that she can get outside and play and do other kid activities.

Any way, we finished the cake:

 and she was delighted with it and it was just lovely.

When Caden was a baby, I took a pretty serious cake decorating class - how to decorate wedding cakes and what-not.  My motivation was that  I wanted my kids to have really fun birthday cakes.  Well, I spent several years making super fancy cakes for the kids on their birthdays until I realized something.  I wasn't enjoying my kids very much on their big day, in fact, it took the better part of the day to decorate the cake and I had to spend most of my time trying to find diversions for the kids so that  I could work on it .  I also realized that my kids could have cared less about the fancy cake I made - what they really wanted was to plan and decorate it with me.  So...we usually get on the Family Fun web site a couple of days before their birthday, and they figure out which cake they want to try.

Around the time of the cake eating, Maddie got a phone call from her cousin Gracie to tell her that she had a cousin born on her birthday!  I heard Maddie say, "Your little sister is probably one of my best birthday presents!"  We don't know the name of the new family addition yet - I think we remembered to ask about everything but that - but congratulations Evan and Jodi!!  The night before, Maddie had asked to talk to Jodi, who was going in to get an induction on her birthday.  She told her, "I just want you to know that children born on September 7th are very delightful!"

Maddie is right.  We love her cheerful disposition and her enthusiasm for life.  I don't know what we'd do without her sweet, positive, fun, tender little personality in our family!!