Happy Spring!

In honor of the first day of Spring (hallelujah!!!), I give you details of our March celebrations:

 

First up, Ed's birthday.  He spent the day working (of course), then had to finish up coordinations for, and conduct a missionary fireside.  Oh, and he sang a song for it.  Oh, and he gave a last-minute talk.  He did a fabulous job on all of it, and I couldn't help but think of the primary song that says, "One year older and wiser too..."  I sure love that wise, old man.  We went on a date the next night, dressing up and spending way too much on dinner, but I'm salivating just thinking about the food we had, so it was worth it.  And we didn't even have to pay a babysitter (thank you Kimberlee).  I'm thinking he had a happy birthday.

 

Next, St. Patrick's Day.  I always forget this one, but apparently I was on the ball this year.  Corned beef and cabbage and Irish soda bread for dinner.

Everyone even wore green.

Keira had been asking me for days if we were Irish, so for Family Night I showed them the Dufficys and O'Carrolls on a pedigree chart and told them stories of their Irish ancestors.  We finished the evening with shamrock cookies and leprechaun donuts from Grandma Anderson.  Perfect!  And easy enough that I could probably even do it again next year.

And finally, our firstborn has reached the ripe old age of 12.  Just writing that makes me want to cry and shout for joy and give her a million hugs, all at the same time.  What an exciting, awful, uncomfortable, fun stage she is entering.

Kimberlee has always been pretty specific about her birthday requests.  Most of them I couldn't fulfill (keep asking my dear, maybe NEXT year will finally be the year of the hot tub and playstation), but she gave me a couple of easy ideas as well.  Like shopping.  She just wanted to go shopping with her mom.  And she was sweet at the last minute, and invited Keira along as well.

Dad got up super early to surprise her with her birthday cake for breakfast.  Yep, she still loves donuts.

He also brought home pizza - he's so good to her.  I was running out the door to gymnastics and told him to get a cute birthday picture of Kimberlee for her scrapbook.  This is what he gave me.

Kassie was pretty excited about pizza.

 I think she'll appreciate having this picture in the scrapbook instead.

We are amazed by this beautiful, kind, responsible, fun tween of ours.  And I'm pretty sure she's not anywhere near done amazing us.  Happy birthday sweet girl!