Happy Birthday Precious!

 

To our dear little girl...

I love you so much, our dear little one. Please pardon my delay in writing this post just for you, but I cannot help but share a few things before another year quickly passes by. You are growing so much, and I'm afraid my attempts to keep you small are to no avail. I'm so proud of you. Your sweet spirit is so lovely, and your love for God and His Word even at this young age encourage me so much. Thank you for being our oldest little baby. We love you, and we cherish you. I'm afraid words cannot fully describe every little joy I have with you, every moment I have cherished, every time I have kissed your sweet, soft little cheek, lingering just an extra moment to savor the sweetness of you., how my heart skips a beat now and then out of delight for your sweet little whims. How I have tried to write down so many special memories, and then with the rest, I try to cherish them in my heart. You are truly a joy. Thank you for being who you are. God has certainly blessed Mommy and Daddy in that we have the privilege of loving you.

And to the rest...

We had such fun celebrating her birthday this year! It is truly to my delight that I have the blessing of planning another party for one of our little ones! Perhaps it is just one of the sweetest joys of motherhood to me... the planning, the cutting, the sewing, the gluing, the baking, the writing, the endless pondering of the little details for an upcoming birthday... I just love it! We had such a fun time celebrating with bumblebees upon bumblebees! But perhaps one of the greatest joys of all was that we were able to just enjoy her on her actual birthday, with fun festivities the day after! What fun we had playing with new horseback riding accessories from Grandma in the "round booth" at one of our favorite little restaurants... and seeing the delight in her expression later when she wore a sombrero at our favorite Mexican eatery--truly sweet! Perhaps that is one of the greatest lessons learned on my part: regardless of the number of things that seem to be endlessly adding themselves to my to-do list around the time of a birthday, simply setting those things aside--even at the expense of much-needed sleep--is worth it to me just to be able to enjoy these beloved babies of ours!

And a note or two regarding my new favorite online store... Etsy!
I just love it! I hope to have more on the details of a thing or two about the party coming up, but for now, I want to make sure to credit the designers who made a couple of the lovely items in the pictures noted above. Latoya from Paper Party Passion(PaperPartyPassion.etsy.com) made some lovely bumblebee templates (at a wonderfully economical price!) that I used for the gift and drink tags pictured above, as well as for her invitations and birthday banner. A template for folding cards also came with this order. And the beautiful bumblebee birthday clips that we used as party favors were made by Kelly at All Things Girly (http://www.etsy.com/people/AllThingsGirly?ref=pr_profile). These were just adorable!

Happy birthday to our little bumblebee!