She’s Three!

 

Happy Birthday to Yaya! Our sweet girl turned 3 years old on June 30th! Hard to believe the difference from last year to this year. She is a totally different little girl. This year she chose her theme… Cat. She has a love for cats so when she saw the Hello Kitty party supplies she went nuts. Ironically Hello Kitty is an Asian creation and it is everywhere in China, but for Yaya it hold no other sentiment other than it simply is a cat. We wanted to have a small party with family and friends at the pool and it worked out beautifully. We had 9 adults and 8 kiddos. We had 3 girls invited for Yaya and Eden and two boys for Noah. The three girls are girls that Yaya actually knows and has seen pretty regularly, they belong to our dear friends Zeb and Holly (their two girls and a niece). The boys are our long time friends Sunni an Rusty’s boys. My parents were there as well as the “Pied Piper” and his lovely wife “The Child Whisperer” (Harold and Jennifer). There was threat of rain and thunderstorms for the evening of the party, and during the day it didn’t look good but I held out faith that all would work out. AND it did…beautifully. We had a lovely time and Yaya we believe really enjoyed herself.  She was clingy to Eric immediately and so I went in the pool and took her from him, which she didn’t care for, and I talked to her quietly. I got her to look me in the eyes after a few minutes and we talked about the party for her and that we were not giving her away and that we would all go home as a family. After this encounter she eased right up and really had a good time…with many of the guests not just Daddy.  One of her favorite times was linking hands with some friends making a big circle that moved around while they sang children’s songs. We ordered pizza and had homemade cupcakes. It was a great day! Yaya loved her gifts and was the most taken with her new pink ukulele from Uncle Rusty. Her second favorite gift was “Scout,” the leapfrog talking stuffed dog that you can program.  Eden has a purple version of Scout named Violet that Yaya covets. We were able to program the dog to say her name, “Hope”, so that the dog talks to her; as well as programming it to like, green, cats, and ice cream. She freaked out when it sang a song about all the things it liked and it was all her favorite things! It was so hilariously cute! She kept signing and saying, “Same Same!” Meaning that they liked the same things. So cute.  Right as the party ended dark menacing clouds appeared and the lightening came and so did the down poor. Perfect timing! Thank you sweet Jesus for holding back the storm.  A great day to celebrate our youngest daughter.