Rachel's Birthday!

Let's rewind for just a second and pretend it's still September. Since it's now September (again), it's Miss Rachel's birthday month! Hooray for birthdays!

 Rachel got to share her family birthday celebration with her beloved cousins. The only thing better than 1 birthday is 3 birthdays! My sister made the awesome Angry Birds cake and we had a blast celebrating those cute kiddos.  (I love "blowing out the candles" pictures. Cute little puckery lips crack me up. Check out Bailey's little kisser. Heh heh.)

We also met up with Nana for a birthday lunch. Rachel is her father's daughter and loves a buffet, so we met at Golden Corral. We had a fantastic lunch and had a great time with Nana.

So this totally killed me! There was a table of some sweet ladies totally playing cards! You'll note little Bailey's partial head in the bottom corner -- I was pretending to take a pic of her, but wanted a shot of the weekly card game. They were darling and lovely lunchmates, but I just couldn't get over it. So funny! A few of them even brought their own tushie cushions. Completely classy ladies playing cards, sipping their ice water, and nibbling desserts. Love it!

Rachel's "real" birthday was Monday. Saturday evening she started to get sick. It was crazy because she acted just fine one minute, then crawled up onto my lap the next and started to feel warm. She went downhill super fast and had a raging fever by the middle of the night. When, in the wee hours of the morning, her fever hit over 103 degrees, we freaked out a bit. None of my kids had ever had such a high fever. So, instead of church, we spent the day in the ER. The docs were alarmed that her temperature was so high and we had a tough time getting it down. Poor little gal.

The hospital staff was wonderful. They set her all up with movies and treated her like a princess.  She was very sweet and cooperative, but felt miserable. Once they got her fever down, they did a bunch of tests. Long story short: it ended up being really bad strep throat.

The day of Rachel's birthday she was doing a little better, but she was still one sick little gal. She was absolutely devastated that she couldn't go to school and felt too sick to do much. Seriously. Devastated. We're talking 'weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth...'

We really tried to still make the day special for her. A lot of sweet family members called and that cheered her up considerably. Our big outing of the day was a trip to the convenience store to get an Icee.

The day before while we were in the hospital, one of the nurses had asked Rachel what kind of birthday cake she was going to have. While rattling off different flavors of cake, she mentioned an ice cream cake. Rachel's eyes nearly popped out of her head. I don't think she'd ever really grasped the concept of a true ice cream cake. She got it into her little noggin that an ice cream cake would be so very dreamy, and that  was all she wanted for her big day. Normally we wouldn't go out and buy a big ol' ice cream cake, but this little girl has her daddy wrapped around her finger and after being with her in the ER the day before, he went out and brought home this little beauty. 

Aqua Sand. One of those gifts that I kind of knew I might come to regret. So fun, but so messy.

Miss Rachel spent the first 3 days of her birthday week sick. By the end of the week she was, thankfully, able to go school and celebrate her birthday with her Kindergarten class.

We felt badly that Rachel was so sick on her big day, but are so glad that her birthday celebration turned out to be so fantastic! She had so many phone calls, cards, and visits from family and friends, and we had a fun birthday party with her friends the next weekend.

We sure love this girl! We waited an awfully long time for her to join our little family and are so grateful she finally made it. She is a strong little girl with intensity just built in. Rachel has a super sense of humor and is a ton of fun to be with. She's become quite a good reader and a wonderful student. Her teacher told me at parent teacher conferences that she was the only child in her class to get a perfect grade in behavior. We are so proud of our girl and are so grateful she's ours! We love you, Rachel! - A bushel and a peck!