Isabella Marie turns 8 years old!!

Isabella turned 8!  They say time flies when you are having FUN and I am enjoying watching Isabella grow into a beautiful young lady!  On her birthday she woke up at 5:30 a.m. super excited to celebrate her day. 

I remember when I was a little girl, my mother always made our birthdays special.  She would always make a homemade cake that was beautifully decorated.  She must have spent hours decorating our cakes.  They were show stoppers.  Like the kind you would walk into a bakery and buy.  I always looked forward to her cakes and they always made my eyes light up.  And my favorite was, she would always ask what WE wanted for dinner on our birthday.  Nothing makes a girl feel more special than when she gets to pick what her meal is on her birthday.  I always chose spaghetti or meatloaf.  Those were my favorite home cooked meals that mom made.

I would like to say that I am carrying on my mother’s birthday tradition….however let’s be honest here, I don’t have the patience to decorate a cake for hours.  Nor do I want to.  For years, I have been buying Isabella’s birthday cake at a bakery.  Well this year, she put a stop to that.  I asked her what kind of cake she wanted and she said, “Mommy, I want to make my own cake!”  Because when you buy them at the bakery, the cake has strawberries inside and I don’t like that!  I took Isabella to the store and she picked out a yellow cake with pink frosting.  Giselle, Isabella and I baked her cake in the kitchen together and she LOVED every minute of it.  I have carried on the dinner tradition and this year Isabella wanted cheese pizza.  I guess I got off easy this year because I didn’t bake the cake nor did I cook dinner!

All in all, Isabella had a grand birthday complete with Dunkin Donuts for breakfast, cheese pizza for dinner and pink cake!  The day before her birthday, I took her to the store and let her pick out an entire outfit complete with shoes so she could feel super special on her birthday.  She also wanted to paint her nails, so we did that together.  She got lots of goodies for her birthday that included new clothes, a chess set, lots of Lego's and crafts, her favorite!  She was most excited about her new basketball hoop in which Grandpa Dale and Bob put together for her.  Isabella and Giselle have been playing basketball in the driveway non-stop since it was put together!  Over the weekend, we had a celebration with her Grandma’s and Grandpa’s and Aunt Jen, Uncle Mike and Tristan! For the weekend celebration, Isabella baked white cupcakes with white rainbow frosting!

Here are some pictures from her birthday celebrations!

 Here are some of my favorite photos of Isabella Marie over the course of time....

Baby girl, KEEP being YOU!  I love your free spirit.  Your effervescence for life!  Your compassion towards others.  Your love for crafts and making things with your hands.  How you always look out for your little sister Giselle.  Your LOVE.  Your beautiful SMILES.  How you love math and chess and Lego's! 

I LOVE YOU Isabella Marie.  KEEP BEING YOU! 

 Love Mom

September 1, 2016

September is starting out to be a GREAT month!  It was the morning of September 1^st around 8:30 a.m. and I had just finished washing and vacuuming my car.  As I was getting ready to get back in my car, I noticed a penny, HEADS side up!  It made MY DAY.  At that moment in time, I thought, it’s going to be a great day!  A great month! 

Finding a penny is considered good luck!  So what did I do?  I passed that penny along to someone else the same day to share the good luck.  And would you believe later that day, as Isabella was walking home from the school bus, she found a penny heads side up to!  And without even knowing about the luck of the penny, I heard her give it to her sister in the back seat of the car.  GOLDEN!

The sky was so beautiful and magical on September 1^st.  When the girls got off the bus from school, I said LET’s GO TO THE PARK.  Once we were there and playing for quite some time, it started getting really windy.  And then it dawned on me.  I have KITES in the back of my car!  They had only been sitting in the back for about 4 months.  So WHY NOT?  What had I been waiting for?  A windy day??!!  The girls and I had a magical afternoon.  Between finding pennies.  The beautiful weather.  The park after school.  And then flying kites!  What really made September 1^st was the RAINBOW we saw in the sky on the way home from the park.  MAGICAL I say.  Just MAGICAL!