Celebrating Meredith!

For the past few years, celebrating Meredith's birthday has been a little tougher as it has always been the weekend before school started. This year, though, it was the day school started!  So that led us to planning her friend party early and we also got a little smarter and celebrated with family on Saturday, leaving Sunday a little more open so that we had time to get ready for school.

So, on Saturday, we had a little swim party at my mom's house with Landon and Carter and Katie Wright, Meredith's forever friend.  We had pizza and I made a cookie cake complete with Frozen characters!

We did our annual birthday Hanks girl sleepover that night, too, so we could get plenty of rest before school started.  Meredith picked out a Beverly Hills Chihuahua movie to watch.  The girls saw a preview for it on one of the movies they watched in the car on the way to Colorado and they laughed loudly and hysterically each time they saw it (and they wanted to rewatch just the preview a ton!) It got so loud, Neal and I learned to put our audio book on pause when we knew it was coming because there was no way we'd hear over their laughter!

 Sweet birthday girl cuddles.

Sunday, we headed to church and then had birthday lunch with Bubbie and Granddad (where I took no pictures!) before we did our before school pedis, dinner, and movie night.  Then it was time for a last 7 year old sleep and good rest before kinder and 2nd!

On birthday/first day of school morning, we still held on to our birthday donut tradition!  

 And lucky for me, since it was her birthday, I had a good excuse to bring up lunch, so my first day sending both girls off to elementary school got a fun interruption.  Plus, I found out that their lunch hours overlap, so they even got to eat together!

We barely made a dent in this massive cupcake, but it was yummy!

After school, we got a fun surprise from Aunt Sandy - an Edible Arrangements princess basket filled with yummy fruit to celebrate the birthday girl and the the first day of school.

That night, we met Daddy at BJ's for dinner and (the reason you go to BJs on your birthday!) a Pizookie!

At home, we finally dove into our family presents!

 

She was pretty excited to get started!  She was a little annoyed we made her wait so long!

Super excited about a new doll set that builds a "mall"

Daddy got Meredith gear to watch Stars games with him!