Makayla's Birthday

Makayla has been very excited for her birthday for a long time now and got to celebrate it over three days. First was the October birthday bash that I covered in my last blog entry.

Monday night we invited the family over for cake and ice cream. The kids were so excited that people were coming over that they were watching out the front window to see them arrive. When Matt and Melinda pulled up they started yelling and running around the front room. This got Molly and Penny so excited that they started jumping around. Jacob and Molly collided and Jacob ended up with a big bump on his forehead and lots and lots of tears. Guess we’ll wait another week to schedule him for his 5 year old pictures (I’m only two months late). (He was supposed to go on October 22, but he threw up all over himself in the car as we were pulling out of the driveway to go.) We enjoyed seeing the family that came. Makayla loved getting presents, playing with her cousins, and having us all sing “Happy Birthday” to her.

Tuesday morning we woke to snow. There was just enough to cover the ground but not the cement. It snowed on and off all day. I greeted Makayla by singing “Happy Birthday” and was greeted with a big smile from her. Then I took her downstairs and showed her that it snowed for her birthday. She wrinkled her nose and said, “Now I can’t play on my swing set.” A few minutes later she was excitedabout the snow and she and Jacob couldn’t wait to go out and play in it. She really does believe it snowed just for her birthday. Two days later she pointed out that the snow was all gone and then said it was because it wasn’t her birthday anymore and that’s why the snow was all gone.

She liked playing with her toys from her aunts, uncles, and cousins in the morning. Erika and Aaron’s family gave her a set of toy food and they had a great time with that. The best part is that there’s so much of it that Makayla didn’t mind having Kaley play with them. She also loved pushing her new stroller around and looking at her books. And of course wearing new clothes always makes her happy and she got to wear new clothes three days in a row. She was excited to go to school and share Halloween sugar cookies with her class to celebrate her special day. She really liked it when her class sang “Happy Birthday” to her during circle time. When I picked her up from school I asked her what she wanted for dinner. She said speghettios. I laughed and then suggested pizza. It took her a few minutes to warm up to the idea, but then she was happy with it, especially when I told her we’d get cheese bread too.

Jarl came home early and we rushed through dinner. Then we bundled everyone up and went to the corn maze in West Jordan with our foster family cluster. Of course it had to be planned for the first cold, snowy, yucky night of the year. I’d never been to a corn maze and was excited to do it with the kids. It wasn’t snowing when we got there, it was just cold. We had the kids bundled and packed Kaley into the backpack and set off to have fun. It started hailing after we’d been in the maze for 20 minutes. Ten minutes later Kaley started crying and yelling and Jacob and Makayla were ready to be done. It took us another ten minutes to get out of the maze and back to the car. All in all, we had an okay time and managed to find 7 of the 10 sign posts. Next time we’d like to go during better weather.

Once back home and in pajamas we let Makayla open her presents and then Jacob and Kaley got to open their one present. They played for a bit longer and then it was story time and off to bed and Makayla’s birthday ended. It was a fun first for our family.