Katie's 9th birthday!

In April, Katie started thinking about what she wanted to do for her birthday. She thought about having a slumber party, or a pool party, or staying at the Disneyland Hotel with just our family, and then settled on going to see Wicked. It wasn't in LA anymore, but San Francisco would work. She said, "instead of a party, I just want to go to San Francisco and see Wicked."

Somehow, she wound up with several birthday celebrations anyway!

Her first was when Catherine spent the night at our house the Friday before Katie's birthday. Catherine and I planned to surprise Katie with ice cream sundae fixin's after dinner! They then stayed up late watching "High School Musical 3." (Daddy and Julianna were on Catalina Island that weekend.)


The very next night, we had Emma over for dinner and ice cream sundaes as well!


Monday was Katie's birthday, and she asked me to bring her In-N-Out for her special lunch at school.




The third grade has a nice birthday tradition: every classmate takes a paper star and writes something they like about the birthday kid. Then the teachers add their own, and bind all of the stars together on a ring for the birthday kid to take home and keep! Very nice.

At home on the evening of the birthday, we made Katie's favorites for dinner and (as she requested) got her an ice cream cake (cookies and cream with white cake - her second choice after vanilla with white cake). She also got to open her presents. She wore her birthday present from Noni that day, of course. She had asked for roller blades, which Julianna and Nick gave her. Mommy and Daddy totally shocked her by giving her Felicity, a second American Girl doll to go with her doll Elizabeth. She even got some new outfits for the dolls! She got lots of exciting gifts this year, including the ipod shuffle she bought herself with money from her brand new savings account!










The day after school got out, we drove up to San Jose to stay with Noni for our big Wicked weekend! Eric, Nick, and Julianna stayed in San Jose and went to see the movie "Up" while Noni, Katie, and I had a nice dinner and then went to the theater. What an amazing time we all had! Katie absolutely loved the show, the performers, the songs and staging, and the experience of live theater itself! She still floats on air when she just thinks about it!