Happy Birthday, Sarah!

We had such a fun time celebrating Sarah yesterday!

Our day began with everyone in our house waking up super duper early. As in before 6am.  
We all had a very good reason for rising so early, but I'll share that in another post this week!


Of course Sarah wanted to open her gifts right away, and of course we let her!

Abbey picked out this cute piggy bank for her sister. Sarah has been wanting one since we saw Toy Story 3. She's also been wanting her own 64 count box of crayons so Abbey gave her some of those as well. She was thrilled.

John picked out this alarm/radio/iPod docking station for her. She loved it. Especially the remote control feature. It's pretty cool!

We were finished opening gifts/cards by 6:15AM. Six. Fifteen. A.M.

So we had breakfast. Sarah requested cinnamon rolls. The kind from the can. And she wanted to eat on her "Princess for the Day" plate. I neglected to snap a picture of that. My bad.

Fast forward a few hours. Sarah and I collected three of her friends and headed to Chick-Fil-A for a quick lunch before taking in Despicable Me. I'd heard it was a cute movie and it really, really was! The girls all loved it.

After the movie everyone came over to our house. Sarah told me last week that she only wanted fruit and homemade ice cream for her birthday. She was very specific about the fruit: raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, grapes, and peaches. And she was very specific about the ice cream: homemade Cookies and Cream (it really was delicious!) And she was very specific about not having cake. Until the day before her birthday, and then she decided she'd like some cupcakes after all. Smile.

She got some fun things from her friends...they know her very well and gave her things that were "very Sarah". One friend gave her a set of these fashion design models which are pretty cool!

Sarah also requested that they do a tie-dye project. Abbey did this for her birthday in March and I bought the double tie-dye set so we had almost everything we needed. Last week we bought some canvas bags and t-shirts (super cheap and with a coupon)! I'll try to post pics of our finished projects later! Abbey got to make a bag and the girls also dyed a bag for one of Sarah's friends that wasn't able to join us.

After the party, we took everyone home and picked up a take-and-bake pizza--Sarah's final birthday meal selection.

At this point, we all nearly collapsed from exhaustion...and from being up since BEFORE 6:00am...but we had still had one final birthday surprise for Sarah.

John and I gave her some horseback riding lessons as her big gift, and John had arranged for her to go meet her instructor and the horses. It was a beautiful way to end a GREAT day!

Doesn't it look like Ellie the horse is smiling in this picture? I LOVE it! I think she probably was smiling. She was a very friendly horse!

We love you, sunshine! You are a joy to everyone around you. I hope your 12th birthday was everything you wanted it to be!