March 4 [Carly's 11th birthday]

We have a long history of unexciting birthdays around here.  Carly might just say her 11th tops the list.  It’s her off year for a party though that didn’t keep her from trying (unsuccessfully) to sneak in some sort of friendly celebration.  Neither Justin nor I were home when she woke up in the morning (I did heat her up a cinnamon roll when I got home from running).  She had to spend the entire day at school (and deal with a little bus stop drama, a story of it’s own).  Then every member of our family over the age of 7 had something going on that evening making a family celebration impossible.

Leave it to good food though to make a day special.  Instead of a birthday cake Carly wanted Oreo truffles.  She was surprised with how well they turned out (dipping food has not been my strong point) – and Boy! were they delicious!

That’s an 11 she’s holding up.

When she got home from school I had to leave to pick up Abigail from soccer – Carly willingly helped prepare her birthday dinner while I was gone.   Not too surprising that it was chicken biscuits – a long time family favorite.

While kids ate dinner I fried up some Utah scones (completely different than Washington scones) that were meant to be an after school snack but took longer than expected to rise so they were an after dinner snack instead.

There was no time to clean up the disastrous kitchen before Carly and I headed out the door to her clogging class.  She started taking clogging once a week from a family in our stake back in October.  Until recently her cousin Hannah was going as well and Grandma and Grandpa Fletcher were taking the girls.  We’re on our own now and debated whether we could still make it work, but we decided we’d give it a try and if she couldn’t make it to a class or two it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

Yesterday was the first class I’d been able to go to and I was impressed.  It looked like so much fun and Carly has all the coordination I never had.  It was so fun to watch and I really hope we can continue to let her explore this new talent of hers (and that the idea of "performing" won't make her quit).

After clogging we stopped by Cold Stone to redeem Carly’s BOGO ice-cream treat.

Turns out Carly was so full of birthday goodness that she couldn’t even finish her ice-cream and ended up bringing it home to enjoy this morning for breakfast.   Hope you had a Happy Birthday Carly!!  We think you’re pretty fabulous even if your birthday wasn’t! ;-)