Abby is Six

At the end of January, Abby turned six!

It was a fun day!  Her day was on a Saturday this year and, happily, Garrett had the day off!  It was so fun to be able to celebrate on her birthday as a family.  She is getting old enough now that she realizes what day it is, so it would have been hard to celebrate on a different day if Garrett had been working.

We had a little party in the park with some of her friends.  I really didn't plan much... the kids played for an hour, Abby opened presents, then we went for a little walk around a trail until the parents came to pick up their kids.  It was easy and everyone enjoyed it. 

For the last several months, however, Abby had been very specific about what kind of party that she wanted: a Chinese party.  We talked about different ways to incorporate this into her "friend party", but in the end we just decided to do a second, smaller party that night and have a couple families over for Chinese food.

Waiting for friends to arrive:

Garrett did the cake.  It says "Happy Birthday", apparently:

All in all, it was a really fun day and we loved celebrating together.  Six things about Abby:

1. She is a great student.  She's at the top of her class and just loves school.

2. Abby loves little kids and is always trying to make them laugh.  She plays with them, helps them, is silly with them... it's so cute to see her interact with them.  She's going to be a great babysitter someday.

3. Along those lines.... Olivia is completely obsessed with Abby!  As of right now, Abby is pretty much the only one who can get Olivia to really laugh for a period of time.  Olivia gives us big smiles and short little airy laughs, but she gives Abby the real deal.  All Abby has to do is play with her or dance around for her, and she's smiling and laughing in no time.  It is so cute.

4. Abby is very social and loves to have play dates and see friends.

5. Abby likes to "decorate" with her toys and things, but I think this is just a way of not having to really put away her stuff.  We put three floating shelves above her bed and she loads them with all her random little things... coins, little doll toys, figurines, jewelry, boxes, little stuffed animals, books, her inhaler.... she also drapes her things around the room to "decorate" it, but really I think she just doesn't want to clean them up and put them in the playroom where they belong.  She certainly doesn't seem to mind clutter. :)  We finally had to put a stop to overloading the floating shelves because they are pretty cheap and we don't want them falling on her while she sleeps.

6. Abby's laugh is so infectious.  One of my friends told me the other day that she loves to hear Abby laugh because it makes her smile, too.  Abby just has a very carefree and childlike laugh and we love it.

Writing Thank You cards from her birthday party:

We love you, Abby!!!