celebrating EIGHT

Well this little lovey of mine just might have a future in party planning :)  She delighted in working on this party!  

Here Lydia is, early the morning of her birthday, posing under the dolphin banner she made herself (with lots of help from bro Isaac).

We got the day started off right with cinnamon rolls and smiles.

She truly has a beautiful, genuine smile. [Oh, and we ate up two platters of cinnamon rolls, lickety split.  To think that I used to halve the recipe.... ha! Not anymore!]

She dug right in to the pile of gifts from her siblings.  Luke is the sweetest gift buyer - he really does delight to bless others.

And Isaac spent way more than his meager budget allows (money flows through his hands like water) but he was excited about both these gift ideas and just could not imagine only giving one of them (glitter pens, and decor for her bike spokes)

After the sibs finished their gifting Mom and Dad got out the biggie.

Now we have yet another bike - ha!  Lydia was past ready for a new, larger bike.  So a smaller one will get tucked away (or loaned to a friend) while we wait for Luke's legs to get long enough to ride it!

After a full morning of FaceTime calls and too many presents and face tattoos for everyone (gift from Grandmama and Granddaddy) ....

.... Lydia headed to her special birthday lunch date - with her Daddy - riding her new bike to a nearby restaurant!

By the time she and Matt rolled back home it was birthday party time.  Whew!  Matt loaded up the three brothers and headed for the pool while we ladies welcomed the party girls and got started painting.

This was a super fun activity (especially without the little brothers underfoot!) and one we might repeat in the future!  I ordered some inexpensive canvases and we picked up paints in a variety of colors, including plenty of blues.   I printed a dolphin sketch off the internet, glued it to cardboard and cut it out to create a tracing form.

I'm no artist, but with the basic outline traced onto the canvas it was easy to add in a few details and the end result was really cool.  The girls LOVED mixing paints and creating different blues and the final paintings were simply masterpieces :)

They painted for well over an hour, and while they worked I mostly washed paint brushes and interjected plenty of encouraging "oohs" and "aahs".  Oh, and I hid some little dolphins around the house - which the girls discovered by following a set of clues.

I hid 8 dolphins but they girls would have kept searching if I had hidden 80!  The clues were a big hit, and they really enjoyed reading the clues, figuring out what it meant, and then racing off to discover the next dolphin (with attached clue)!

Matt and the boys joined us for dinner dinner (tacos) and cupcakes!  Lydia hand colored these little cupcake flags and decided on sea blue icing.

What a great day!  Start to finish, top to bottom, morning to night.... we celebrated this sweet baby girl!

You, Lydia, are a precious treasure, a gift from the Lord.  And we are so very grateful to call you our own!