Five and a Half

  As you may have gathered, I love these kids.  I think it is just so cute how they get excited about the littlest things.  Ava's been doing a countdown to her half birthday for quite some time now, so we really couldn't let it pass by without taking the opportunity to celebrate her, all day long.  : )

She woke up to balloons scattered throughout her room & the house.

 I had also cut up watermelon for her and had it waiting when she got up. 

We measured her on her little growth chart & compared how much she had grown from her last half birthday, a year ago and also how much she had grown since she turned five.

 No surprise she pulled out her fancy dress & crown, it seemed appropriate. 

 I spent the morning cleaning while the girls played.  I made them a green smoothie packed with berries, spinach, chia seeds and added just enough blueberry frozen yogurt to make it extra "birthday" special.

Next we headed out for ice cream at Cold Stone.

 Then home to nap Norah.  We sat down to read some books together as is our general practice when Norah is sleeping.  

Amelie made this for Ava's special day & had her mom text a picture of it over, isn't that sweet???!

To wrap up our fun day we decided to take the girls out to dinner.  We NEVER do this so it really was quite the treat.  We went to a place called Blast Burger in Lake Oswego, I'd never been & it was really lovely, situated right on the lake.  The place had great outdoor seating with tons of fun things to explore with the kids.  I'm not much for making them sit & wait in restaurants yet, Ava is plenty old enough but Norah, not so much.  She has a time limit and I was determined to not use it up waiting for our food so John took them on a walk until our food hit the table.  It worked out perfectly!  Norah was able to last through the whole meal, happily eating & chatting with us.  Her time limit was up as I was just finishing my last sip of wine. 

 Next we went on a family walk down by the lake.

 I adore these people.  So blessed.

These girls stop and talk to everyone we come across, immediately referring to the people as "our friends".  Norah would get distraught when they would walk away, "Where are our friends going?  Why are they going that way? They need to come back!"  She is so funny.

Since John missed out on the first two rounds of ice cream, we decided to end our fun day with a little Salt & Straw action, pretty much the best ice cream anywhere.  We all shared one small scoop of Salted Carmel, it was amazing. 

It's funny how you can turn an ordinary day into such a special one, most everything we did today was from gift cards we'd been saving so we had less then $15 out of pocket for our entire super perfect half birthday celebration.  

And making Ava feel so special?  Priceless!!