Hannah's Birthday

So it's taken me more than a few days to get this post up. It seems like my week has been consumed with my first experience selling stuff on eBay. Maybe it shouldn't be so time-consuming, but it sure seemed to eat up all my time. (We were selling some security system components we acquired through our apartments, i.e. a tenant who was way behind on his rent and to avoid getting evicted just left and we found this box of stuff, which legally we are entitled to after a certain time period as part of a landlord lien for unpaid rent.)

Anyway...

As I mentioned in my last post, Hannah celebrated her 9th birthday this past Sunday. I say it every birthday for my kids, but how do they grow up so fast? She was very excited and couldn't wait for me to get home from my meeting after church to open her presents.

Since Courtney is obsessed with dogs these days, Hannah has taken the cat route. She wanted all kinds of cat stuff, and she ended up getting a set of short books about cats ("Catwings"), a card game featuring cats, some Littlest Pet Shop cats and a custom CD with a few songs about cats (I downloaded several other "new" songs for her as well as the cat songs).

I also ordered her a few other books that ended up being backordered and didn't arrive in time for her birthday. One (a Jr. Cookbook) I just printed a picture of and the other two (Shel Silvertein poetry books) I checked out from the library and gave her the library copies in a box. Is that lame?

Grandpa and Grandma sent a new scooter which the kids had to test-drive all over the kitchen afterward.

It was no surprise that she wanted a cat cake this year. We found a picture of one that she liked and I tried to make a few modifications to it. Sometimes I really wonder how these cakes are going to turn out, but I've learned over the years to not stress over how perfect it looks. The only opinion that matters is the birthday girl's and she told me it was "gorgeous" :-).

I always try to write the birthday kid's name and age somewhere on the cake. I put Hannah's on the side and decided to add nine 9's around the edge as well since she's 9 and cats have 9 lives. She thought that was pretty funny.

Time for blowing out the candles! Think hard about that wish...

And she got them all with one blow!

Happy, Happy Birthday Hannah!