Lucky 7!

Happy Birthday, Julia! I love that Julia was born in the spring - even one of her Chinese names means spring - Chun. After the long dark days of winter, Julia's birthday heralds longer days, hopefully warmer days and the promise of good things to come.

A tradition that we started on Julia's second birthday was tracing her hands and then decorating the prints on a special birthday table cloth. When I was a kid, my mom had a vinyl cloth that was decorated with birthday stuff on one side and Christmas cheer on the other. It was a great feeling when you woke up on your birthday to see the special birthday cloth on the table, so I wanted to recreate that kind of tradition with Julia. It's one that she looks forward to each year. I love to hear her reflect on the prints from the previous year, and see her eyes widen when she puts her hand on her baby, toddler and preschooler hand prints and sees how much she's grown.

This is this year's tribute -- you'll see some left over St. Patrick's day cheer has been used to commemorate this year's luck 7 birthday. How fitting! Each finger nail has been adorned in bright green "nail polish" with a shamrock decal. Love the little shamrock rings she's made as well for each hand. Always important to accessorize!

Another tradition is getting breakfast in bed on your birthday - my sister, Carmel has been doing this with her kids for years. Julia loves it. I made enough for both us to enjoy some before we started our busy day. Julia says she'll return the favour when it's my birthday.
Julia had gone through quite a growth spurt these last six months -- mostly in height. As a result we have no shortage of capri pants for the spring, but are super low on pants that fit her lanky legs now. So clothes were the order of the day! Here she is in a new birthday outfit - the jeans are the perfect length, but we still struggle with the waist despite the elastic pulls, but she managed for the day.
Alyse and Moe came for a taco dinner and some balloon fun party games.
And here we are celebrating with a brownie number 7 and even a #7 sparkler although it's hard to tell. All the candles went out in one blow - more good luck for my lovely girl. Happy birthday my sweetheart.
Julia here is reading the clues for her birthday hunt - she and Alyse were up and down and all around the house looking for the treats that were hidden. They love playing spies and solving puzzles so this was perfect for the dynamic duo.