Happy 9th Birthday Brielle!

Brielle turned 9 on Wednesday.  What a fun age!  She is sweet and kind and thoughtful.

Brielle and her cousin Abigail have birthdays just 2 days apart.  They were excited to have another joint birthday party to celebrate with family.  They have tender bond and love to be together every chance they can, despite their 7 year age difference.

Abigail wanted a tea party cake and theme.  Brielle loved that idea.

I was happy about it also, because prior to the teacake theme suggestion Brielle had wanted a complicated dolphin cake that I wasn't sure I could pull off very well.  She decided that didn't go very well with the theme and instead wanted a cookie dough ice-cream cake.  She still really wanted fondant and wanted to decorate it herself.

She colored and rolled out the fondant and cut out all the letters, choosing not to have any specific decorations.

And, as for the food requests this year:

For our extended family dinner she wanted Lasagna, Breadsticks and Caesar Salad.  I will have to look back, but I'm pretty sure this has been her exact menu for the past 5-6 years. 

Her actual birthday menu requests were a bit different as we were traveling.  We were home for the morning of her birthday for which she requested crepes with nutella, bananas and raspberries

After breakfast we joined her Gramma Finlay at a conference in the Palm Desert area.  At a reception that night she was surprised by being called on stage as the group of adult conference attendees all sang Happy Birthday to her.  This kind guitarist gave her a copy of his CD as a present as well.

She chose to go to Souplantation for her birthday dinner that night, very happy that there was one close to our hotel.