Her BEST birthday party EVAH!

                                     

 Our sweet baby girl is now 13! I can hardly believe that she has already reached this age. Truly, it feels like she was just born.....except she sleeps through the night which we all really appreciate! :) On her ACTUAL birthday day we headed out to where else? American Girl store! Grandma Sheila took us out for lunch and then we had a wonderful, leisurely time meandering through the store, touching everything, talking about everything and learning tons from one of the sales associates. Atira is pretty sure that some day she will work there! I really do believe it could be true!

 We came home and that night she opened up her gift, which was a combined present from both sets of Grandparents and her mom, dad and brother. Our budding photographer received a camera! She was thrilled! She has taken many photos with her new gift and is loving every moment of it. If you would like to see some of her work, head on over here: Atira's photography blog

The birthday princess chose to have a homemade dinner of hot dogs, corn on the cob, onion rings and watermelon. Topped off with ice cream for dessert. It was delicious. :)

 Now on to the best part, her PARTAY! Atira chose to do an 80's themed birthday party which included a photo scavenger hunt. It really was an amazingly fun afternoon! We headed out fully dressed in 80's to our local grocery store to pick up a bouquet of flowers. These flowers were for giving away to people on the streets of Snohomish as we made our way through the town. While at Fred Meyer a few of the clerks came together and sang Atira Happy Birthday. It was a most fantastic start to our radical day!

 We had many items on our list to take photos of one of which was "sitting on a wall".

 I just thought this was too cool to not get a shot of! HOW FUN! They look like an 80's band!

 "Reflection in a window"

 "Having an argument" They decided to argue about how awesome their pony tails were. It was HILARIOUS. I should have videotaped it, it was that priceless.

 "Sitting in one chair"

 "Reading books" Ok, this one was hilarious to me. All these girls are homeschooled, so I was not too worried about taking this bunch into the library, I just told them they had to respect the rules and they were good. What got me was when one of them came up and said "what do I do if I find a book I want to take home?" HA! Only these girls would want to stay and actually look for more books to check out and take with us on our next stop!When it came to finding books most of them were quite discerning! They were not really even reading them, but they were looking through as if they would be! Cracked me up!

 "Reading"

 "Fell asleep reading"

 "Silly"

 "Fell asleep, again"

 No 80's party would be complete without SLURPEES!! This was definitely a highlight!

 A stop at the park with our slurpees.

 Rock it girl!

 Goofy faces!

 Jumping, this was a really hard shot to do.

 "form a star"

 "Human pyramid"

 "Piggy back"

 This is a huge rock in Snohomish where the local high school kids come and repaint with all kinds of different sayings. Atira has always wanted to go and see it. Today was a perfect day for a visit!

 Wrapped up the day with swimming and a BBQ! The 80's menu consisted of nachos, corn dogs, watermelon, cheetos and candy. Lots of candies.

 Grampa Curt literally took the words out of my mouth with this get up. Oh my word. He was wearing a mullet. It was AWESOME!

 I will have to follow up this birthday post with all the pictures of her Photo Booth. That was such a great idea! The girls had a lot of fun with it! In the end, the day was filled with so much laughter, great friends and family and the very best memories. So blessed to have this amazing young lady in our lives! God is good to us!