Happy 3rd Birthday Rhianwen!

Happy birthday, Wawa (this is Alden's way of saying Rhianwen). Alden worked really hard to make his sister's birthday a reality:

The 3 year old has emerged.

This is the first year that Rhianwen semi-understood what 3 meant. She kept saying things like "3 hugs for 3 years old!"

A bike with pedals!

I love the look on their faces...identical!

Alden loved handing gifts to Rhianwen.

"Little mommy" (this is what Rhi calls herself after reading a Golden book with the same name) with a new baby doll (Berenguer for $2 at a consignment sale...I had to make the dress...man am I bad at sewing.) She's named her Sara and loves her!

We had a fun party with her little friends on her actual birthday. One of the cool things was instead of everyone bringing gifts, they just brought stickers for a sticker-exchange. I felt like this took the focus off of gifts and put it back on enjoying the time and the people.

Blowing out the candles. (Rhianwen changed what she wanted her cake to be about every 30 minutes, but decided on Mr. Happy. She then added she wanted Mr. Happy holding a Bible. I assumed she wasn't entirely serious given that she had wanted a big chair and little chair, a purple rabbit, a leaf, a ladybug etc. But when she saw the cake she said, "Hey! Mr. Happy's not holding a Bible, mommy! He's supposed to be holding a Bible!" She wasn't at all disappointed, just very matter of fact.)

This is serious stuff!

We had a blast playing ring toss, pin the feathers on the owl, fishing for prizes, and a treasure hunt that ended in a big kiddie pool full of recorders hidden by packing peanuts. This was the first time we had thought of tying Bible verses to the clues for the treasure hunt. It was so fun making that application. Of course, I'm sure it all went over the kids' heads, but someday, they may get it!

(You can kind of get an idea of the yard decorations in this video too) For more, just go to our blog http://renovationtracker.blogspot.com/2009/10/fall-birthday.html).

What do you think the kids thought was most fun?

Rhianwen even tried to lead the crowd on her own game, a bear hunt (a game we've played as a family and a book we've read). The kids all ran around after her jumping off hay bales and the like, but I'm not sure if they knew what was going on. For example, her friend Phoebe yelled out, "Here comes the giant!" Regardless of the results, I thought it was neat how Rhi took charge.

We also enjoyed getting to have a video chat with Uncle Robeson and Aunt Natalie and Uncle Christopher. R and N gave Rhi some fun gifts, but the funniest one was the book There was an old lady who swallowed a fly. Rhi had never heard the song before, so when Daddy got to the part about the horse, Rhianwen interrupted and said, "Uh, but her mouth's not big enough!" Then when daddy got to the end, Rhianwen sat quietly for a moment processing and then said, "Ok...the end" and closed it. So cute! She's enjoyed reading it and singing it many times since then. Another favorite gift was her first umbrella from Uncle Christopher. I'm sure we'll have many pics of that in the future. Even Alden was taken with it and learned the word for it, "Mbella!" he says. Another favorite thing/word now is "Sguc!" (It's a truck!"). I ended up getting a whole book about trucks after realizing that in every book we read, he focuses on the trucks in the picture (even if it's really about airplanes).

Our prayer for Rhianwen is that she will have the heart of a true princess as the child of God, full of service, compassionate, joyful, and looking to Jesus for satisfaction and abundant life.