Chloee turned 5!!!

I have made it a tradition that on each child's birthday, they get to open one present in the morning and it is their "birthday outfit". Now, my girls love this, I may have to change that if I ever have a boy. She woke up with her present sitting on her nightstand. I can't believe how much she has grown up.

That night, we went out to Winger's for her birthday with Amy and the boys. Amy was passing by on her way up to my mom's house. The kids loved to stare at themselves in the mirror in our booth.

Does it look like we have enough food?

After dinner, we went bowling. Chloee LOVES to bowl.

It was so crowded. Of course it was, it was a Friday night and the last day of school. Lots of tweeners and hoochies everywhere. Who am I kidding, those two are one in the same.

Every time I look at this picture, I can't stop laughing. It's just too funny!

Ditto for this one.

I don't really know what this is. I told Josh to bowl so I could take a picture and this is what he did.

Yeah, I suck at bowling, as usual.

At 9:30 it turned into cosmic, black light bowling. Yes, you read that right. We didn't get out of there until a little after 10 and Amy drove another hour up to my mom's house and turned around and ran 24 miles the next morning. No, I did not write that wrong, it was TWENTY FOUR miles. Crazy woman! She is training for her marathon that is in a couple of weeks, so I guess I can say that it's not like she just went out to run 24 miles for fun.

We know how to spell our kids' names. The worker put them in. Josh killed with 122 and most of the kids beat me, at least I can say they had bumpers but I don't think that really would have mattered.

Here it is, almost 11 pm and we are doing presents and cake. Yep, we are super awesome parents.

Making cakes is kind of my thing I do for my kids' birthdays but this one I didn't have any extra time because I was making cake pops for Chloee's party. I bought this poodle (which Chloee picked out, I didn't) from a bakery for her to blow her candles out.

She did an awesome job. We had our cake and ice cream and we put the very ornery girls to bed. Josh and I then started working on the cake pops and were up until 2:30 am doing these little devil cake pops. Note to self: These take a long time, these take a lot of patience, these need to be done over the course of a few days to set up. Not me, I wait til the very last possible second.

Out of all the ones I wanted to do in the book, Chloee wanted the little chicks. This is my first attempt at cake pops. By all means, they don't look awesome or professional but I thought for my first time and it being 2 am, they don't look so bad.

The second batch turned out better than the first. We kind of got the hang of what we were doing at that point.

I have never done a friend birthday party for either of my kids. I did family ones for Chloee for 1 and 2 but the years of 3 and 4 for her were not good times in our lives, so we just celebrated the 4 of us. Chloee loved her party and had a lot of fun with her friends there.

They had pizza and drinks.

And had a lot of fun with the water. We did a big water party. We had water balloons on the tramp with a sprinkler under, this huge slide I borrowed from my friend, slip & slides and wading pools.

The kids loved the cake pops and the ice cream sandwiches. As you can see by Halle's face, the edible black marker I used for the chick's eyes, runs.

My friend, Melissa's little girl, Maizey. Yes, she put water balloons in her swimming suit. I love this picture. Maizey's face makes me laugh.

Well, it was hectic and it was tiresome and the clean up as horrendous but Chloee and all of her little friends had a blast.

A few things about Chloee:

*She loves to sing, especially primary songs.

*She loves to have stories read to her.

*She has a very tender heart.

*She gives compliments all the time. For example, "Oh mom, I love the way you did your hair today. So cute!"

*She loves to write thank you notes and cards to people.

*She loves to do her own hair.

*She loves to learn and can't wait for kindergarten.

*She loves soccer and T-ball.

Happy birthday my dear, sweet Chloee.