Look Who Had a Birthday!

Happy 4th Birthday Princess Kirstie!

We had a whole weekend celebration for Kirstie's birthday this year.  It all began last Saturday with the Draper Parade-- a Buchanan family tradition.

Ian recently has had a fascination with fire trucks, so he was in heaven with all the many fire trucks in the parade.

After the parade we went to Grandma and Grandpa Buchanan's house for lunch, presents, cake & ice cream and swimming.

  

Kirstie got to hold her new cousin Jackson.  She is smitten with this new baby and talks about him all the time.

Cake #1

Kirstie is a very tender-hearted girl.  She doesn't really like being the center of attention in large groups.  This isn't the first year that she's cried while we sang to her.  She tells us that she gets nervous to blow our her candels.  Sweet girl!!

Luckily, she got over it quickly and enjoyed eating her cake and rainbow ice cream!

It was a HOT day, so the kids were happy to cool off in the pool.  Both kids love playing in the water and didn't want to get out when it was time to leave. 

A couple of days later Kirstie had her first birthday party with friends.  I never really saw a need for her to friend party in the past, but this year she was invited to multiple parties for friends and asked if she could have one too.  Here are the pretty princess: Calli, Kirstie, Elise and Amber.

We had a princess tea party.

And played some princess games.  Their prizes were pretty princess jewelry.

After frosting cupcakes, we played games outside and then had a "princess ball" where they all danced around.  I'm glad Kirstie had a good time!

 After all this partyting, finally it was her actual birthday!

She was thrilled to get more princess barbies! 

Birthday lunch at Rock Creek Pizza.  We were the only ones there for awhile, so we got the pizza buffet all to ourselves!

Another present from mom and dad-- she'd been asking for a princess scooter for months-- ever since her friend Elise got one for her birthday back in April.  Kirstie's getting pretty good at the scooter!

 Birthday Party #3 with the Olsen family.  The kids swam and played in the water. It looks like Ian is about to whack Kirstie, but really he's just using the noodle as a baseball bat and swinging it through the water.

CHEESE!!

And of course there were presents...

 ...and cake and ice cream.

 I decided to make Kirstie a princess castle cake this year.  Yep, I'm kinda crazy.  I did a lot of research and got a lot of ideas and this is what I came up with.  Kirstie loved it-- as did all the other kids.

 Yum!  Kirstie, Paige and Ian enjoying their cake and ice cream.

 Here is our annual 24th of July tradition-- fireworks before it gets dark.  It's just too late to keep the kids up until dark, so we always light them early.  We lots of parachutes, but we do normal ones too.  They're still fun to see, and we don't have nearly as ornery kids the next day.  Neighbors might think we're crazy, but oh well!

I love my Kirstie-girl so much! She is such a sweetheart and a very imaginative girl.  I'm so lucky to be her mom.