FOUR

Miss Madeline turned 4 today! We are amazed at how quickly these past FOUR years have FLOWN by! Her favorite color is PINK, so we started the morning off with pink pancakes.

She's such a big helper in the kitchen - always wanting to cook (don't worry, she's not allowed to do anything that involves the stove), do the dishes and sweep. She started setting the table on her own too and does a beautiful job. She even helped make her birthday cake by pouring ingredients, cracking eggs (with no shells!) and mixed it up. It makes her so proud.

We headed to the Kansas History Museum with the play group after breakfast and she got to play dress up with her friends. She was a cowgirl today.

Then we picked Jeremy up for lunch and he took her to Red Robin for their daddy daughter time.

She's quite the corn dog sometimes! Jeremy asked the waiters to sing Happy Birthday to her and bring out a sundae. This video cracks us up because she's totally not her bubbly self here. When she watched it she said, "I was being a little shy." And that's COMPLETELY OK by us.




After dinner (I'm sure talking a lot about our meals today!) we had some cake. She specifically wanted a PINK mermaid cake. She's a girl who knows what she wants! I did my best - don't judge my cake decorating skills please. She loved it! I love that it's so easy to please her. She could be in a terrible mood, but give her something as simple as a balloon and she'll forget all her worries. She's got the best smile. She gets our jokes and can even remember them days from now to retell to us.


All we had for candles were "2" and "2"....so add them together and you get "4"
Again, she's so easy to please that it took just one simple gift. She doesn't want much, in fact, she just wanted to have her party with only her family. She is able to form her own opinions. She likes to make decisions, and tries really hard to always make good ones.
I love that she shares so well with Abigail. I hope these two will be best friends for forever. I also hope that Abbie will want to wear clothes.

This is a VERY special card. When I had a baby shower for Maddie (November 2004) each friend got a numbered card. That number corresponded with Madeline's age. Each person wrote her a message to be opened on that respective birthday. Yes, I've been toting these cards around and will continue to do so until she reaches 21.

Today she opened Grandma Barbara's card which said:
"I remember when your mommy was pregnant with you. We couldn't wait for you to get here and now you're 4 years old! Happy Birthday! ~Grandma O'Neil"
What a neat gift from 4 years ago.
Madeline is a gift to us and continues to bless our lives with joy. She's quite an amazing little girl.