Ayla's 6th Birthday!

Miss Ayla Ming turned SIX today! Craziness. When she opened her door this morning, she said, "WHOA!" when she saw the decorations I put up outside her door. One of the first things she said after that was, "Today is a fun day!" It doesn't take much to make her so happy! It was strange to not spend the whole day with her since she was at school! After Aubree and I picked her up in the afternoon, we spent a couple hours doing whatever she wanted. :)

First this picture from swim lessons a couple nights ago--her name was on the board for having a birthday this week!

First stop--Dairy Queen! She chose a chocolate Blizzard with M&M's and then proceeded to sneak bites of Aubree's sundae and my apple pie Blizzard. :)

These are totally out of order and I'm too lazy to fix them...so we're going to back track for a minute. :) Dean went to Ayla's school and had lunch with her. She was soooo excited! Dean took a bunch of super cute pictures.

Ok, and now we're back to Dairy Queen. :)

After ice cream, she requested going to a Halloween store. We trekked over to Village Pointe and checked out this one. Once we finished looking at the happy, cute princess section (which took all of four minutes), we all three realized it was time to go. They had a lot of realistic looking scary, gross things that little eyes didn't need to see.

 So we walked over to Scheel's and got a free birthday ride on the ferris wheel. Much better. :)

And then she spied rice crispy treats at the snack bar. I'm kind of a Nazi about sweets so it made me twitch a bit to let them have ice cream and then a rice crispy treat. BUT it's her birthday. :)

We checked out the giant pumpkin tree.

And made some wishes in the fountain...

Here is Ayla wishing REALLY hard. :)

And then they spotted the decorated area and actually took some nice, lovey sister pictures together. :)

After Village Pointe, we went to Gordman's and they each picked out a little stuffed animal. Then we headed home to wait for Dean to get home from work. As soon as he walked in the door, Ayla told him it was time to open presents. :) Those pictures are on my actual camera...stay tuned.

For dinner, she picked Red Robin, of course. She loooooves their mac n cheese. :)  Grandma and Grandpa met us there!

Oops, insert another lunch picture here. Goofballs. :)

They sang and clapped for her at the end of our meal. :)

 MORE ICE CREAM!

When we got home, we did our traditional Ayla birthday night ritual--lighting a lantern!

She kept telling us it had been a really fun birthday. Mission accomplished. :)  I love when they are so thrilled about the little things. We didn't do anything crazy or extravagant but she still loved every second of it. Love it. :)  Her birthday party is tomorrow...more pics to come!