Happy Birthday, Dana!

Dana turned FOUR on Thursday, March 26!

I can't believe that my tiny baby is starting preschool in just a few months. How did time go that fast?

On Thursday, we went to Great Grandma Gloria's house for pizza, cake and ice cream.

Before we could enjoy our food, though, we had to open gifts. Dana is absolutely thrilled with the keyboard she got from Grandma Bev and Grandpa Jerry. She loves to make music and sing songs. Mama, Daddy and Nora got her a swimming doll, something Dana had been asking for for months. It is incredibly creepy. It looks like a normal doll, but when you put it in water, it automatically does the front crawl, including turning its head to "breathe." Dana, of course, thinks it is fantastic! Great Grandma got her three puzzles, which have been a lot of fun, as well as "tickets" (also known as money).

Blowing out candles proved to be tricky. They were not trick candles-I swear! Dana just could not blow them out! It took her several tries, and she finally blew them out, one at a time, in a decidedly juicy fashion. Poor Grandpa was showered throughout this event.

I am not sure what to say about this. On Thursday morning, Dana and I pulled out my entire collection of cake pans. People, I have about a billion of them, so this took a while. After sifting through hearts, flowers, stars and the like, my little princess selected this beautiful skull pan. I am pretty sure she chose it because it reminds her of Scooby Doo. I thought it was particularly amusing because she told me the pumpkin pan was "too Halloweenie", yet the skull apparently was not. I have to admit I kind of love that she picked this.

Tomorrow morning, Dana's cousins and little friends are coming over for cake and ice cream. I was wandering around on the World Wide Web and found this. I showed it to Dana and she got so excited! I have attempted to recreate it for her friend party. I realize it is not as cute as the professional one, but I think it came out OK. Plus, none of the guests have seen my inspiration, so they will think I had this wonderful idea all on my own.

We will be celebrating a third time tomorrow evening at Grandma Inese and Grandpa Don's house. I am already exhausted from all of the partying!