Five Candles for Claire

Claire turned five while we were on vacation at my parents house in August. I cannot believe my sweet little baby girl is already five years old. She's growing up too fast!!!!! To celebrate, we went out to eat and Claire got to pick where we went. For the last 6 months or so, Claire has loved fried fish. She came home one day from school and asked me why we never ate fish for dinner. Uh...I don't know...cuz I don't know how to make it? Cuz I don't really like it? So, ever since then whenever we go out to eat she begs for fish. Grant and I do not like this new phase since the only place around us that consistently has fried fish is not a very good restaurant. But, of course, since it was her birthday we let her pick where to go, and since we were in Spokane and not Milwaukee there's a restaurant called Zip's that has good fried fish and good hamburgers, so we were all happy! Here's the birthday girl at the restaurant:

And we even tricked LuLu (our nickname for Ava, if I haven't mentioned that yet) into wearing the crown for a little bit.

We had cake and ice cream when we got home (and got in pjs!):

I had planned on doing a party for her when we got back from vacation, but school started the following week and I was so busy that I never planned it and it seemed like Claire had forgotten about it anyway. Well, not so. A few weeks ago she started making "invitations" for her party and every few days or so since then she lists for me the people she's going to invite to her party. Apparently, in her mind, her birthday still just occurred yesterday. So...we're going to be having a very belated party here in the next couple of weeks! She really has turned into such a sweet and fun little girl. I sure love her.