Five

our sweet, smart, sassy, silly, spirited little girl turned 5 on november 11th!  if anyone finds that hard to believe, it doesn't even compare to how i feel about it.  i honestly can remember the day she was born with such great detail.  she came into our life after a hard few years of trying to grow our family and i suddenly realized exactly why God chose to make us wait.  everybody always says "there is a reason" and sure enough, she was our reason.  never doubt God.  he knows best.  and he knew exactly what he was doing by choosing her for our family.  

for her birthday this year, we decided to have a shared birthday party with gianna's friend and classmate, gracie.  they share a birthday and if we combined it, we could invite all the girls in their class and kill 2 birds with one stone, right? 

the girls decided on a unicorn party and so gracie's mom, lisa and i divided up the party prep and it was so much fun!

i made some unicorn ice cream...thank the good Lord for pinterest, right?

and i was in charge of the cake too.  i found an inspiration picture and did my best to recreate it.  i have to say, it did not look the same as the picture, but i think it turned out okay.
also, we found out after we sent out invitations that the girls had one more classmate with the same birthday, so isabella was added to the cake too!  can you believe there are 3 girls in one class with the same birthday?  isn't that crazy? 

her birthday balloon surprise...

someone was super excited to open presents in the morning.

roman picked out this present for her and she was so excited to receive it.

sleepy, messy hair pictures are my fave. 

ready for school on her big day!

it was also veteran's day, so they had a flag parade in music class.

here are all 3 birthday girls in their class.

after her classroom celebration, lisa and i headed to decorate for the party.

look how beautiful all three birthday girls are!

and this is gianna's friend, emma, who had a birthday the day before...whew...so many birthdays!

not real sure what is happening here, but they sure are goofy. 

they played pin the horn on the unicorn...

and decorated their own horn. 

we were so happy that gianna's friend lucy could come to the party too.  she really misses her now that they aren't in class together every day. 

not real sure what is happening here...

one of gianna's gifts was an instax camera, which spits out the polaroid pictures right away.  so we had lots of pictures like this with the girls showing off their horns and unicorn tails that lisa made!

she got to open a few more presents that night when we got home. 

and the next morning, she opened her present from aunt colleen, uncle josh and the girls.  it was full of balloons with surprises in them.  the kids loved looking in them to see the surprises before they popped the balloons!

and aunt hettie came to her soccer game the next day and brought her this talking kitty.  she was pumped. 

it was quite a day and i'm reminded of how truly blessed i am to have her in my life.  she brings me so much joy and laughter and i adore her.  just as we felt on the day she was born, gianna = God is gracious.