Whitney's 5th Birthday

As usual Whitney was up bright and early on a special day!  (She usually sleeps in until at least 8, even occasionally 9!  But on her birthday she was up at 6:45!)  Ready to open presents!

 One of her favorites- a book about Space!

 Another favorite- a green playground ball!

 Breakfast was Millenium Falcon french toast.  It is Star Wars day after all! May the Fourth be with you...

 Then Owen woke up and was being his usual big smiley morning self, so we had a little photo shoot:

 And I caught this face on camera finally!  His big cheeser happy face!!

 Little cutie, look at all those teeth!

 Then we went to the girls' Let's Play Music recital!  There on the back row is Katelyn with her class-Sahaja, Katelyn, Adalie, Madison, and Quentin.  She's been with these kids in class for 3 years, so they're good friends!  Especially her and Adalie, since we've been sharing rides.

 Here's Whitney playing autoharps with her first year class.  She has great natural rhythm and sings very enthusiastically!  She learned a lot in music this year, and greatly improved her vocal range.  She also got really good at reading "bell maps"- bell playing pictured farther below.

 Whitney doing the classical music puppet show with Reese, with me and Owen helping behind.

 Whitney's grumpy genie face- so awesome!

 Katelyn singing and concentrating on snapping to the beat of "Let's Find the Root"

 Katelyn with her trophy at the end!  I'll have a separate post with a video of her playing- she has learned so much and we are so proud of her for all her hard work practicing!

 Here's Whitney playing the bells- the bell maps tell them what to play- it's an early form of reading music.

 The girls with their teacher Miss Cathy- she's awesome!

It was a fun birthday activity.  And then instead of another birthday cake, Whitney chose to have....

SNOW CONES!!  for her birthday treat!  It just so happens that our favorite Snow cone stand in Payson opened on her birthday, so it was perfect.  

The rest of the day we had Millenium Falcon grilled cheese sandwiches and hung out and watched Charlotte's Web and had a Darth Vader pinata.  Then the girls and Eric went to a movie while Owen and I went to Costco and then we went out to dinner.   It was a good day.  

We love our Whitney Mae and don't know what we would do without her enthusiastic personality!  There is no middle ground with her, she's full on excited or full on upset!  Sometimes changing quickly back and forth!  She's trying to learn to read, she loves to sing, she LOVES to play with friends and have parties.  She and Katelyn are best friends, and she is so sweet to Owen most of the time.  She asks lots of deep questions and says many insightful things and her prayers are just priceless.  So real and sincere. :)  

And now she's FIVE!