Happy 8th Birthday, Beautiful!

Natalie is 8!  Hard to believe.  What's even harder to believe is that her birthday fell smack dab in the middle of this family getting hit HARD by the flu bug.  Ugh.  Oh, the unexpected joys of having a birthday in the middle of cold and flu season.

It all started with Audrey.  She fell ill the week before Natalie's special day.  Just as she was beginning to feel better, I fell ill  prior to Natalie's party.  Thank goodness Nana was here to help Corey pull it off.  It went beautifully and Natalie enjoyed it so much.  She also enjoyed being in complete control of all party prep as I laid in bed sick.  She actually frosted her own cupcakes (after Nana helped her bake them), made her own cupcake toppers out of toothpics and stickers and assembled all the party goods for transport to the pottery studio where we had the party.  She did an amazing job and I'm pretty sure she could handle all parties from now on!  Such a little first born take charge leader, this one.

In addition to staying healthy enough for her party, she went to school on Monday (her actual birthday) chipper and excited to share birthday cookies with her classmates.  But Monday after school when Nana picked her up, she was feverish and it only went downhill from there.  She actually sneeze/coughed out her birthday candle on her cupcake after dinner and could barely find the strength to open her presents before heading to bed...until Thursday.  Poor kiddo.

Morning

Evening

As I still couldn't get out of bed, Corey transported each kid to and from the doctor and eventually fell ill himself on Tuesday.  We've been a mess around here all week. But Nana, thanks to an immune system of steel (clearly the result of a lifelong career in nursing and a lovely positive attitude), still stands.  We are so grateful for her help this week.

Natalie received a karaoke machine for her birthday and she was so excited to use it.  So Corey set her up on the sofa with the microphone, played the Frozen karaoke CD on the TV and there she sang...while lying down.  We called it "sickeoki".  Poor bug.

But our (almost healthy) 8 year old currently loves:

playing outside
all things fairy
Legos
pogo sticking, biking, scootering, tennis playing and monkey bar monkeying
dressing up
reading, writing, illustrating and storytelling
playing with her crested gecko, Zipper
and all things GIRL (braids, ribbons, sparkly accessories, lipgloss that smells like rasberry, etc.)

Love her!