Natalie has been very spoiled this year. She has been asking about her birthday for months, and the way things have played out, she has had many in the past few weeks. Birthday #1: Every family birthday, Barbara has a traditional birthday dinner that we celebrate with just our family on a designated Sunday close to that person's birthday. Natalie really enjoyed this evening. Birthday #2: Next we celebrated Natalie's birthday while camping with several of our friends. We had our traditional pancake breakfast, just this time it was camping style. Then we ate cupcakes when Dad arrived and opened presents. Natalie's favorite was her new Barbie 2-wheel scooter. She tell us that now that she is 5, she is not a baby anymore. 3-wheeled scooters are for babies and William can have hers. Birthday #3: On Wednesday night, only a couple of hours after arriving home from camping, we had a night planned to take 2 of Natalie's closest friends, Tyson and Lillian, to McDonald's for dinner (Natalie's favorite place to eat), have cake and play at then play place, then go to Disney's Magical Journey on Ice at the American Airlines Center. It was great fun. Very crazy to accomplish it all in such a short amount of time, but Natalie was thrilled. All the kids really seemed to enjoy the show. Natalie's favorite part was of course The Little Mermaid, equipped with bubbles and an enormous inflatable Ursula whom Prince Eric kills with King Triton's trident, producing fireworks and lots of foggy smoke. Pretty cool.

Birthday #4: My mom has a tradition of taking each of the kids out for a special day around their birthday, just she and them. Natalie was able to pick where they would go and she picked the American Girl Place. She was able to take her well loved Lilly doll and have her cleaned up, while Natalie and Nana checked out all the cool sights. They had a wonderful time. Natalie was exhausted by the time she came home, but after all the weeks of excitement, she woke up on Saturday morning and said, "Are we going to Disney World now?!"