Happy Birthday, Jelly!!!!

                            

Look at that cute, little face.  

That adorable smile belongs to my baby girl...who's not really a baby anymore.  Today, she is 6 years old!! *Sniff*

I just can not believe that my little munchkin is growing up so fast!!  She's already doing things like reading, and writing, and doing math problems.  When I go through her backpack every day, I'm shocked and amazed at how much my little baby is already able to do.  

At six years old, she's already ahead of her years.  She's so independent.  She fixes her own cereal, makes her own sandwiches, pours her own drinks, sets up and plays on the computer, and plays video games almost as well as her dad.  She also loves to cook, helping anyway she can, and is a great helper when it comes to cleaning (when she wants to be).  

Her current obsession has become writing.  Now that she's able to write complete sentences, she spends a lot of time sitting on the couch, with her Magnadoodle, writing.  She writes about our cat, and writes all of her sight words and spelling words over and over and over.  If she gets anything from me, then I hope it's a love of reading and writing.  

Of all my kids, I see Jelly being the one to follow in my footsteps.  She already does the same things I used to do at her age... like pretending to be a teacher, and spending her evenings going over all the stuff she learned in school that day.

But, she also has a very active, rambunctious side to her.  She enjoys playing outside and running around just as much as she does playing video games, reading, and writing.  She's active and creative.  Two traits I'm very glad she has.

She's also the first of my three kids that would much rather make her own birthday cake than get a store bought one.  

Last night, ahead of the winter storm that's coming in today, I made a run to Walmart to pick up everything we'd need to prepare her birthday cake whenever we get home today.  She requested a strawberry cake, and we're going to make chocolate ganache icing.  Yep.  Just like her dad.  Loves to cook, and is pretty creative.  I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been able to ask for a chocolate covered strawberry birthday cake when I was her age.  The only options I could of come up with would have been chocolate or white...because white was a flavor back in my day.

Being that I might not be able to take her out to shop for a birthday present this weekend, I went ahead and picked her up a pony set and a writing notebook.  She asked specifically for a pony for her birthday.  Not a real one.  One that she can brush it's hair and carry around.  Hopefully, I picked out what she was talking about.

It's tough having a birthday so close to Christmas.  I don't want one to overshadow the other, but I also don't want to give her something for her birthday that I've picked out to give her for Christmas.  Being that she only asked for two things for Christmas this year, I wanted both of those things to come at Christmas.  Thankfully, she came up with the pony idea just a few days ago.  That helped take some of the pressure off when coming up with ideas for a birthday gift.  

And, it appears that she's going to get snow for her birthday.  Actually I'm positive she will.  I don't know if it will be enough to go outside and play in, but I'm sure that any amount will peak her interest enough to at least run around in.  

I wish I had time to write more... because there's so much I could talk about this morning.  My baby girl has given me so much happiness and joy, and I have so many wonderful memories to share.  But, somebody (me) didn't get out of bed until late this morning.  And now I have to go and get ready for a very scary day at work.  I know we're going to get out early today because of the winter storm that's heading this way.  I'm scared to death of having to drive in snow and/or ice... but I'm praying that everything goes smoothly, I'm able to get out of school before the roads get bad, and then the kids and I can come home and enjoy Jelly's birthday.

My little girl deserves it.  But, she also insists that she go to school long enough today to eat the cupcakes that she bought for her class.  

Gotta love that sharing, caring personality.. right?

OK...local peeps, stay safe out there.  And warm.