Addy's 7th Birthday!

I'm pretty sure that if I look back at previous birthday posts, they will each start, "I can't believe my baby girl is ___ years old!" And this year I feel no differently. Addy has grown in tremendous ways this year and it has been fun (and sometimes nerve wracking!) to witness. More on that in a future post!

For Addy's 7th birthday, she wanted a Barbie sleepover/party. Since we love all things girlie at our house, this wasn't very hard to pull off.

The barbie cakes were a huge fiasco this year and the store ended up giving them to us for free just for the hassle of them messing up our order in multiple ways. All said and done, though, it tasted delicious and the girls still enjoyed eating it:)

Pizza is always Addy's meal of choice for her parties. It's her favorite.

One of the activities we did that night was doing each other's hair, which the girls really got into.

The other activity was a game. The birthday girl was the barbie doll and each team had 1 minute to put as many accessories as possible on her. The team with the most accessories at the end of the minute, won. The game was such a hit that each girl wanted to take a turn being the barbie doll. There were lots of laughs and giggles on this one.

With all the girlie-ness going on, I wanted to be sure we kept in perspective what true beauty is and where it comes from. In between games, we read from 1 Samuel 16 where Samuel annoints David as king and talked about true beauty being from the heart. This was my favorite part of the night, as we talked about what this looks like in every day life. I was so proud of this group of girls - most of which I've known since they were very little - and the depth of their spiritual insight. I got choked up just listening to them share.

Addy received some very fun presents this year, including the Barbie and the Princess Charm School doll (which was one of her favorites), the Rapunzel tower . . .

and the boat from Rapunzel with the Rapunzel and Flynn dolls.

The night ended with a movie (Barbie and the Fairy Secret, of course!) and, in true slumber party fashion, the girls snuggled on the floor to watch it. When the movie ended, after a few trips to the bathroom and a few drinks of water, they finally fell asleep . . . and were up at 6:00 a.m. to go at it again:)