Five year old festivities

Before too much time gets away - here's the recap of how we celebrated our five year old:

Being semi-new to the area and not having a well established friend "base", we came up with three basic options for Elena's birthday celebrations this year, aside from the standard celebrating we'd do at home regardless- 

1. Have a birthday party with friends (which basically would amount to inviting her Primary class from church),

2. Travel down and spend the weekend in Tucson to have a party with her cousins (we were rooting for this one because her cousins are some of her best friends and we'd all enjoy some fun family time. win-win. :)),

3. Go to the zoo, dinosaur museum, aquarium, other exhibit/outing of her choice (she'd been talking almost non stop about going to these and kept asking when we'd take her).

Elena stewed over the decision for a couple of weeks. It was very hard that she couldn't do all three. One night she offered us a compromise: "How about I can go to the zoo. AND then I can have a party with friends!" It was said with such equanimity, we almost found ourselves agreeing before we knew what was happening. :) And then she offered, "Well, maybe we can go to the zoo and Sophie and Maren (Tucson cousins) can come with us!" She is a problem solver- you have to give her credit for a great effort. Finally, about a week before her birthday, she settled on a trip to the zoo - no, the aquarium- no, the dinosaur museum! No, the aquarium - no, actually the zoo! No, actually really the dinosaur museum. Ah, the decisions one has to make when one is turning five!

Since her birthday fell on a Thursday and the weekend after was Conference Weekend, we trekked to the dinosaur museum (aka The Arizona Museum of Natural History) the weekend before her birthday and kicked off the celebrations. We started with a birthday lunch stop to In-N-Out and then arrived at the museum. 

Elena and Lily visited the museum earlier in the summer with my parents and Elena was slightly excited to be back:

It was actually a pretty impressive little place for the price. Usually I feel mostly ripped off after paying admission at places like this, but there was a surprising amount of things to see and do. 

A water fall (which went into "flash flood" mode every twenty minutes or so), plenty of dinosaurs, a real life jail (slightly creepy), lots of cool rocks and gems, tons of Indian artifacts and displays, panning for gold, a fossil dig, and so forth.

Lily was a little nervous about the flash flood "thunderstorm" and the large T-Rex. This is her "I'm nervous AND curious" stance - arms in, tip-toeing, trying to smile, and standing about four feet back from the action. :)

On the morning of her actual birthday, we had the house all decorated and ready for her...

Nutella!, a sleepy "five", birthday balloons, and Nutella toast for breakfast 

(she came out of her room that morning with the flower in - funny girl)

We had a full day of birthday worthy fun lined up. First up, a trip to play at the "covered park": 

And then the birthday girl requested swimming - which really made me smile. Usually, I'm worrying about whether or not it'll be warm enough to have a party outside for her birthday. And it's been about 50/50 (raining and freezing vs. high 60's, mostly sunny, and bearable) so far during her first four years in Utah. But no worries this year, it was 100 degrees here in Arizona and swimming was definitely in order.

 When Daddy got home, we had her birthday dinner of choice: hot dogs, corn on the cob, and pineapple. :)

Followed by cake (an oreo cake that she very excitedly chose herself)...

...and presents!

Happy Birthday little miss!