Taylor's 7th Birthday Party

This past weekend, we helped to celebrate Taylor's 7th birthday!

When we showed up at their house, everyone got right down to business playing and making lunch! 

Trent and the girls played with Noah's Ark and all the animals that were actually a Christmas present for Taylor but it came broken, so we had to get a new one. 

(I will mention that Trent's sister and her family just recently moved into a new house and are getting new flooring on their main level soon. That's why there isn't any furniture in this room :) )

Nice face...

The playing turned into Trent picking on the girls or them picking on Trent, I'm not quite sure which way it was going. :)

Melodie was in the kitchen getting lunch ready. She made some awesome cheese sticks and four different kinds of pizza. It was wonderful!

After lunch, it was time to sing "Happy Birthday" and eat some cake and ice cream.

Then it was family Rainbow Loom time :) I told them that they could be in an advertisement for Rainbow Loom with this picture!

It was then time for the birthday girl to open her presents!

She got some really great stuff for her parents. What they ended up doing was giving her something from four different categories. 

1. Something she wanted -- New outfits for her doll

2. Something she needed -- A baseball glove since she's starting to play that in the spring

3. Something she could read -- The Frozen book

4. Something she could wear -- New cute pink, sparkly Sperry's

And from Jenna, she got a doll of Princess Elsa from the movie Frozen. I think they both loved that gift!

From Trent and I, Taylor got some money. Her parents decided that since Christmas just got over and she got a lot of gifts, it would be best to give her a dollar for each year of her life. So Trent's parents and us each gave her $7.00.

To spice it up a bit, Trent and I decided to send Taylor on a scavenger hunt to find her gifts, one dollar at a time.

I found some cute little rhyming clues online and wrote them down and put them in her card. After she opened the card, I helped her to read that her presents were throughout the house and she had to use the clues to help her find them.

Taylor really didn't have much trouble figuring out any of the clues! She would go find where the dollar was and then come back to the room and let us know how many dollars she was up to. She'd stuff the dollar in her pocket and then she was off to find the next one. It was fun to watch!

When it was all done, she was feeling pretty rich I think!! 

During the day, I also had a chance to play around with my new camera. This time my subjects were Noah and all his animals :)

As we were gathering around the cake to sing her happy birthday, I realized that this was the 5th birthday that I was able to be there to help celebrate with Taylor! I can't believe I've been in their family that long! That seems like forever. When I told Trent that I realized it had been 5 years, he said that I'm lucky that they've kept me around that long! That, or I tricked him into keeping me around... something like that!

On Taylor's 3rd birthday, I was just a lowly girlfriend that Trent was bringing around, but I was lucky that they allowed me to be a part of their family events. By Taylor's 4th birthday, we were engaged, and by her 5th, we were married! I remember going to their house on the day we got engaged to share the good news and Taylor saying something like "When you two are married, you'll be Aunt Kendra!" 

I have loved watching her grow up and am so happy that I've been able to be her aunt. I hope that I can be as good of an aunt to her and her sister as my aunts were (read: are) good to me!