A Quick Two Years

Katherine making her birthday cake while Claire supervises.

We celebrated Kate’s birthday a few days ago (along with her birthday buddies, my sister Jenny and Shamu the whale).

Skyping with family while she opened presents. Isn’t technology incredible???

While it’s been a quick two years that she joined our family, it seems like a lifetime ago–Jack was still a student, we were still in Iowa, I was still in my twenties(!) and the girls were all small.

As of late, most mornings Kate sits on my lap while I write.

So much has happened since her rather inconvenient-yet-perfect choice of birthdays and it’s been so fun to have Kate along for the ride.

Raven’s the pace setter, Claire’s the slave driver (I want to go hoooome!) and Kate’s the comedian, always making funny faces back at me by smashing her face into the screen.

It was kind of a normal day: we went running, ran a couple errands and still worked on the house and took naps, but we did do a lot of fun stuff too.

The party started early with a My Little Pony party the night before at the library.

For the first time, we visited Evelyn for lunch. Kate, Claire and I were welcomed into the clan with open arms and laughed and played until we were worn out. Though I couldn’t get Katherine to say definitively what she wanted for her special birthday dinner, she for sure wanted to go swimming. So she did.

They probably all want to go to school now.

Of course, we had to have time for horse watching, cat petting, running in circles and high-fives:

She claims she’s no longer a baby, uses phrases like, “That’s so cool, mom!” and “I made this for you!” (among other equally hilarious, articulate expressions), is seriously considering potty training and is one of the few people who is a match for Claire, she’s still by baby.

Getting ready to take the plunge.

We had a wonderful time celebrating together and are looking forward to another year with our sweet, hilarious, intelligent, spitfire Kate.

Blowing out candles all by herself!