Happy 4th Birthday, Natalie!

4 years old today! The time seems to have gone by so quickly. We spent the day a little differently than we had originally planned. We were planning on playing at Stonefire Pizza tonight, but since Natalie has just gotten over being sick recently, we thought we would postpone those plans for a later date.

After waking up Natalie shortly before 10 a.m. yesterday, today she made up for lost time by waking up at 6:30 a.m. When I finally got going, we went to her tennis lessons for the second day. Natalie looked like she was enjoying herself a lot today. Yesterday, she was a little frustrated that she wasn't able to do everything as easily as the teachers made it look. I am glad she had fun today.

We had to make a quick stop at Wal-Mart to pick up some special Disney World pictures for Natalie's album. She chose some special chocolate donuts for her lunch time dessert. Because of our crazy week and the original birthday plans, we had opted out of the traditional DQ cake. So I whipped her up her requested banana roll-up for lunch. And for dinner, she chose Applebee's so we had another special birthday treat there. Thank goodness Natalie is rather easy going when it comes to certain things. For example, she wanted lemonade for dinner, but the machine was not working so she opted for OJ. Then, she wanted a corndog for dinner, but wouldn't you know it, they were out of those too. Option number 2 was just fine with her again. I liked her comment to me when I was disappointed for her. She said, "Birthdays are just another day, Mommy."

We ended our evening with a fun time with our friends the Grubers at one of our parks in town. We will be celebrating more birthday with other family and friends as we get together and see them soon.

---------Added by Nate----------
Where have the last 4 years gone? I still remember the feeling of being overwhelmed and unsure of what I had gotten myself into. Natalie, you are a blessing to our lives and I love you very much! I love watching you grow and learn and am looking forward to seeing more. I'm glad you felt better over the last 2 days and were able to have a great birthday. I'm also looking forward to my belated Father's day "Daddy/Natalie" day we're going to do on Saturday!