The Girl is officially NINE!

At 10:43am Tuesday, it is now official! NINE!

She must've been excited, because the usual sleeper-inner of the family was up before 7am for her nine kisses!
We had chocolate-chip-buckwheat pancakes for breakfast, followed by a cupcake with 9 candles. MMMMM...breakfast of champions!
She opened up her gifts from her brother (a Barbie & an MP3 speaker/pillow), and two books from Dad & me (Caroline Kennedy's Poetry for Children -which is beautiful & highly recommended by our family- and a United States Atlas) The rest of the loot will, sadly, wait until Daddy's arrival home for opening.
We nixed the Millenium Park idea, very sadly, because my old left foot decided to start having apparent tendonitis issues during my run on the treadmill Monday...ACK! Anyhow, thanks to the foot, we decided (the B-Day girl's idea) to see a movie instead, and she selected THE PIRATES WHO DON'T DO ANYTHING . It was absolutely hilarious, and we were the only people in the $2 theatre - so we laughed our heads off with

wild abandon, repeating all of our favorite character quotes loudly! Afterward we went home to pick up Daddy & then out to dinner for burgers & the obligatory waitstaff-sing-thing. After dinner we raced home to watch American Idol (this is our first season doing so - I confess, the kids are at an age where it is really fun to watch - so I refuse to feel guilty about this current TV addiction), followed by an hour or so on the sofa just talking & hanging out. Hazel said her favorite thing about the day was too difficult to select, so she listed about 10, which pretty much included everything we did ))smile(( !