Happy Birthday to Millie!

For Amelia's 7th birthday, we couldn't come up with a good gift for her.  She truly didn't need anything. neither practical nor a toy.  We ultimately decided on a trip to the mall (where we almost never go) to shop, eat and spend time together.  In preparation of her trip we painted nails and washed, cut and braided her hair.  Above she is about to get her haircut when her Grammie and Papa called to sing the birthday song.  She is listening to it on speaker phone.

All ready to go and hanging out with her sisters for a few minutes.

Brr...it's still a little cold outside.

Cecily helped me make Amelia's birthday dessert.  We saw a recipe for these ice cream cupcakes in a cookbook.  We cut circles of store-bought pound cake, spread them with strawberry jam and placed them in the bottom of a muffin paper.  Then we placed a scoop of strawberry ice cream on top and froze them until firm.  Later, we "iced" them with whipping cream and froze again.

We started our outing by visiting Chick-fil-A in the food court at the mall.

Millie enjoyed the special treat of chocolate milk.

And they gave her a dish of ice cream when they found out it was her birthday.

Just the two of us!

The main shopping we did was browse at Claire's, the accessory store.  We probably spent close to an hour looking over all of the jewelry, hair things, etc.  We had never been in that store and it was our main destination spot in the mall.

We tried some things on.  Amelia really liked the metal tiarras.  They have some very fancy things in there!  I ended up letting her get a few fancy things to take home for dress up.  She loves fancy, but I told her she couldn't actually wear it except for dress up!

She got gloves, a crown and some rings to share with Cecily.  I let her pick herself with some guidance.  It's not what I would have chosen for her.  I'm curious to see if she's glad about the choice later.  I think she'll enjoy them but I'm hoping in the end, that she'll learn through this that she might have enjoyed something she could use more often more than these items.

In the evening she opened her gifts from her siblings and from my parents.

And always the cards that are looked forward to.

This is from my mom.

She found  a very cute tea party themed set of paper supplies that included invitations, place cards, a tablecloth, plates, napkins and cups for having a tea party

The other part of her gift, my mom sent in the mail.  It was wrapped up in pieces.  Here Millie is trying to guess what it could be.

A plate, with a hole, and still no idea.

It's a tiered tea tray, that needs dad to assemble it.

Ah ha.

So pretty!  Someone gave this to mom to find a home for.  She thought Millie would enjoy using it for tea parties.

Here are the finished cupcakes.

What a fun day she had.

Here are the layers of the cupcakes.  They were a hit.  They kids loved them.