Taneal's birthday

Friday was Taneal's birthday. My little girl isn't so little, she turned 9! She wanted an American Girl doll for her birthday, but didn't even ask because she was well aware of their price (she did a lot of Internet searching). She said clothes or whatever would be fine. Well, we splurged and got her the doll. She was very surprised and even more excited. All weekend she has been thanking me and telling me how responsible she will be and how she is just so excited to play dolls with Camie (Camie got an 18 inch doll for Christmas). The only problem is that Danielle doesn't have one. I tell you kids are beginning to get really expensive. I can't just buy one anymore, I have three girls!

Taneal and I had fun decorating her cake. I have used fondant before, once learning to use it in my cake decorating classes (10 years ago) and once on a wedding cake. The stuff is fairly easy to use, holds color really well, but isn't very tasty. Taneal doesn't like frosting, so I figured we might as well have fun with the cake because she wouldn't be eating the frosting anyways. She loved her cake and it was fun to make.

We do birthday parties every-other-year and this was the year for Taneal to have a party. She wanted a sort of "sleep-over" with the little problem that we don't do sleep-overs. So, we had a "late-night" party. She invited several girls from school and from church. Most of them came and Taneal was delighted to have 15 girls running around the house for 3 hours. We had pizza, a craft, cake and ice cream, a movie, and games. It was so much crazy fun and Taneal loved it. Afterwards, when I was crashed in bed but not yet asleep, Taneal got out of bed and came into my room and told me "thanks for a great party, it was even better then I had planned." What a sweet and wonderful girl.