Turning 7

Yes, its that time again. Another birthday celebration comin at ya! Our family all has birthdays the second half of the year, with the exception of Zack. So the birthday posts are in no short supply lately.

This time its Alissa's turn to party. Seems like we just did this, only this time around she is 7. We can hardly beleive we only have 1 more year to another baptism in the family! October is crazy busy for us this year, so we had to celebrate a week early. Its her odd birth year, so no friend party this time. Instead, she chose to get crazy at Monkey Joe's. She has been dying to go here since they opened, so it was pretty exciting. For our family of five kids it costs us more than we think its worth so this was our first time. All the kids had a great time bouncing, sliding, throwing and running all over the place...except Brylee. I tried to get her to go into the toddler area right off the bat, and she was terrified. It didnt help that by the time she started to get warmed up to it, the thing deflated on us and almost trapped us inside! She quickly decided the baby merry-go-round was more her speed. Later on, we discovered the ball house, and she determined that was a good place to stay. Its a huge blow up house with a basketball hoop and football goalposts and filled with soft balls you can throw around. Later came a few little slides, but the ball area remained Brylee's favorite. Monkey Joe himself showed up briefly and scared all the kids off, except Brylee. Weird. She was the only one brave enough to go give him five. At any rate, Alissa decided Monkey Joes was awesome and was glad she picked to go there.

The slide program I used to use, is no longer working, so I have to check around for a new one. For this time, I used Picasa, but the pictures are really small, and they dont have captions (hence the long explanation above), so Im not sure I will stick with it. At least you can get an idea of all the bouncing, sliding, throwing and running around. (: If any of you know a good slide program I can link to Blogger, let me know!

After a few hours at Monkey Joes trying to get our moneys worth, we rushed home to eat pizza and cake. And no, its not valentines day. Alissa decided she wanted a heart cake.

But before devouring the cake, she decided to open her gifts.

A plaque for her room...

fairies rolling art desk...

Tangled...

and a Princess Charm School Barbie.

At last- time for chocolate!

We all stayed up to watch Tangled afterwards.

The next weekend, on her actual birthday- Alissa got a package in the mail from her aunt. She loves the Minnie Mouse Halloween shirt!

Her birthday was pretty busy, but we squeezed some time in the evening to take her to the store to pick out one more present for herself and a quick birthday treat. She chose chocolate cookies...

and this cool hanging lantern string for her room, that she could decorate herself.

Of course, we all helped color the lanterns, and then hung it up for her to sleep under.

Im not a photographer, and dont have a fancy camera, so I couldnt get a good picture of how it really looks in the dark, but here it is hung in its semi temporary position above her head. Of course her sisters wanted to sleep with her, but she got it all to herself this time.

It seemed crazy and crammed together, but somehow we fit all that celebrating in! Now onto planning for the next one! Here we go again.... soon.