Sonia has had a birthday.

The other day, Sonia came up to me and said, “Mommy, I think you should do one of those posts where you find pictures of me from when I was little and then bigger and then bigger.”

So, here’s Sonia through the years.

6 Days

Year One

(this cake and all the other ones in these photos are my not-from-a-box chocolate cake recipe)

Year Two

Year Three

Year Four

Year Five

Year Six

Year Seven

And that bring us to year number eight!

As usual, the night before Sonia’s birthday, I crept into her room and hid a little present under her bed.  This time around, I chose to leave a t-shirt for her.

Mr. FG found this on Shirt Woot a couple of months ago, so we snapped it up and saved it for Sonia’s birthday.  It’s a little hard to find cute turtle merchandise, so when we see something like this, we usually jump on it.

Now, Sonia is not the most patient soul in the world, so she opened some of her presents after breakfast.

Mr. FG had to go to work, of course, so we had dinner at lunchtime, as usual.  We ate Thin Crust Pizza, because Sonia is not a fan of thick crusts.

Since Mr. FG was at work, we decided to have Sonia’s cousin sleep over on her actual birthday, and then do our family celebration on Saturday night.

We decorated cupcakes together, and I’m fairly certain more sprinkles landed on the floor than on the cupcakes.

Since we spread Sonia’s birthday over two days, I hid another shirt under her bed…this time a bus shirt from Dandelion Dream.  Lisey and Zoe both had one, so Sonia was dying to have one too, of course.

We made her real birthday cake on Saturday…a turtle shape, which Sonia designed and frosted.

And sprinkled.

Sonia has been a big fan of sprinkles from the time she was very small.

We made turtle rolls again this year.

They’re awfully cute, aren’t they??

I remember to try making a fish roll for Zoe, and all was well until I tried to make a fanned tail, and then it started to look like a squid.  Whoops.

After dinner came the rest of the presents.  Sonia made herself a sort of present-receiving throne. She is nothing if not enthusiastic when it comes to presents.

I made her a turtle blanket since she liked Zoe’s whale blanket so much.

And she was overjoyed to receive a turtle nightlight from a little local toy store.

It shines colored stars all over her ceiling at night, which is lovely, and of course since it’s a turtle, that makes it all the more fabulous.

Cake comes after presents.

We snuck in some trick candles, which sparked like mad.  Sonia was pretty surprised, but she did get them all blown out eventually.

Happy Birthday, turtle-loving Sonia!  You add lots of color to our lives and we’re glad you’re in our family.

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Today’s 365 post: The view from my seat on the couch

Joshua’s 365 post: Steve and Fred (plus the answer!)