NINE Years of Blessings

I had planned on having this post up on the 3rd of July to say "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" to my little girl..... but we were busy celebrating her birthday; blogging about it can wait.

It is so hard to believe that my little baby girl is NINE years old. It has all gone by so quickly.
One day I'm cuddling with this chubby little two year old.
The next day I'm making a cake like this:
My husband took the day off from work and we had lots of fun spending the day together. The night before I stayed up to decorate the house. This is one of my kids most favorite parts about their birthday. It makes them feel extra special to see the house all pretty just for them. Since we've moved here this part has been difficult because I've only recently found places to buy decorations, and they are very expensive. But this year it was Heather to the rescue! While she's in Okinawa she and I can send each other mail for free, so I send her a grocery list and money every once in a while and she'll go shopping for me. My last request was for a few decorations. She prayed, and found the perfect set to send. Thank you, Heather! We re-purposed the tablecloth, but my daughter loved it that way. There's more decor around the house, but I won't bore you with all the pictures.


Her choice for a birthday lunch was McDonald's. That's always a treat here because it's pretty expensive. She enjoyed her $6 Happy Meal and boring toy (is it just me, or have these gotten worse over the years?). I shouldn't have, but I enjoyed my french fries too ;)
After lunch we came home and had cake. That is to say, my kids each had a tiny sliver before they were sick of all the chocolate, my husband isn't a big fan of cake, and I gave up eating sugar... so the majority of that cake got sent away for others to enjoy. Maybe next year I'll stick some candles in an apple or something ;)
Present time! She wasn't having a traditional party with friends, but I wanted her to have as much fun as possible. So I planned a treasure hunt for her presents. This turned out to be a great idea... she had SO MUCH fun with this! I hid her presents all over the house and put a label on each one with a clue for where to find the next one. I tried to get pictures of her as she found them, but she was running around so fast the pictures were blurry and I couldn't keep up with her! We'll definitely be adding that as a family tradition for birthdays.
After presents it was off to the zoo! In the U.S., trying to go somewhere for her birthday is always difficult because it falls on the 4th of July holiday weekend, so everything is busy. Obviously, we don't have that problem here. Last year we went to the zoo for her birthday and it was all but abandoned, so we had no trouble finding parking or getting around inside. We were expecting the same this time. We were wrong. How in the world were we supposed to guess that the JERUSALEM zoo would be having a celebration for Canada Day and America's Independence Day?? I repeat, in JERUSALEM. We had a terrible time finding parking, but we finally made it in the door. Since we'd been there before we just let my daughter pick her favorite things to see. She really enjoyed the petting zoo this time as they let all the baby goats out to run around.

We had a great day together... HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Pearly Girly!

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This last picture has nothing to do with our family or with my daughter's birthday, but I just had to add it as a picture of life in Jerusalem. I didn't get their faces out of respect for their privacy.
Do you see what I see?? Yes, that's a man with a fully exposed handgun on his side, pushing a baby stroller. Not uncommon here at all. He'd fit right in with the Israeli soldier with a machine gun slung over their shoulder walking around the mall. It's just their way of life.