Eleven Years Old

Chloe's birthday celebration started off with a party on Saturday. Her new friend Beth came with us up to Centerville where we had to go pick up Megan, and we met Lark at the Subway there for lunch. Then we all drove down to the planetarium in Salt Lake together. We only had about 15 minutes to hang out before our show began. Chloe had really wanted to go watch Space Junk. Megan's kind of a nerd (what'a a nice way of saying that?) like Chloe, but I don't know much about Beth yet so I hope she enjoyed it! When the movie was over we let them look around at more of the displays. I think their favorite was aligning the planets and seeing if they would crash into each other. Then we had an ice cream cake waiting for us at Ben & Jerry's that we needed to get to! The 7 of us filled the store, but it worked out well for us to eat there -- which I had been a little nervous about. Then we took everyone home, and that was it. It was the most simple party to throw together, but it's exactly what Chloe wanted, and that's what I love about her.

Thursday was the actually birthday. Chloe had worked hard on Wednesday doing double all her work, so that she could take Thursday off. That was fine, but she got so bored on Thursday! I don't know what she expected to do, but it rained all morning so we were stuck inside. Once the rain stopped we were finally able to get out and go take some pictures. That turned things around. She had requested tacos for her birthday dinner, and for dessert we went to Cold Stone to use her birthday coupon and gift card she got from G&G Nicholls.

She wanted to go to a park after that, and she saw one on the way home to stop at. The girls thought this was the greatest park ever (I've personally seen better). I think it was just big, and they haven't been around big parks much. But we had a fun time (after I got warmed up from the ice cream!) We played "monster lava tag" (I think my girls made this game up) on the playground, then I wanted to show them the skate park so I took them over to watch the skaters for a bit. They got lulled away by a bridge and wanted to play "Pooh Sticks," which we did for a very long time. Then it was a round of normal tag out on the huge lawn before we needed to get home. It was already past bedtime!

As we were just about home we passed the UPS man. We were expecting a package from him, but I figured he would have been there long before 8:00. So, I guess it was perfect timing. I figured out what the gift was the second I saw the package, but Chloe doesn't know what "Celestron" is. She was pretty excited when she opened the box and saw that her grandma had gotten her a telescope! So now, even though it was past bedtime, we had to set up the telescope and then take it out to look at the stars. What a great birthday for one of the stars of our family!