Kenzie's 5!

This year for Kenzie’s birthday we decided to just have family over to celebrate. I say just, but that still was a lot of people. Our niece Marion had just had her baby the week before so our niece Jennifer brought Marion’s girls Gracie and Carlie over with her 3 kids, Izaak, Bryson, and Morgan. My cousin Shelley also came with her 2 boys Kasen and Aiden. My mom’s cousin Heidi came with her son Noah. Blake's sister Marta also came with her husband Barry and son Bryan. It was a full house but a lot of fun. Being July we thought it would be fun for the kids to play in the pool in our yard, but being in Utah with the unpredictable weather the wind was blowing and the kids got cold as soon as they got wet. So we dried them all off and sent them to the playroom to play. Kenzie had requested homemade pizza and snicker salad (yes it’s a salad with candy in it, we justify it by adding fruit, thanks Marion and Jennifer for the recipe!) for her birthday so I had spent the day making up 4 pizza that I could just throw in the oven for dinner, but thanks to an accident somewhere, we ended up being without power when I needed to put the pizza in. Blake and our nephew Dave went into Tooele and got $5 pizza from Little Ceasars. Not quite home made but still good when you have a house full of starving kids. So over all, not quite the day I had planned, but it was still a great day. Kenzie loved playing with her cousins, and I had a great time visiting with my cousins and nieces.
That weekend we were also able to celebrate Kenzie and my mom’s birthdays. My parents came down and we tried to surprise my mom with a visit from my brother, but she figured it out before he arrived. Thomas brought his girlfriend Sam. It was the first time I was able to meet her. She’s so sweet, we all fell in love with her right away. She spent the better part of an hour Saturday helping the girls make a rock garden in the back yard. It meant so much to them! Hopefully someday we can call her part of our family. My dad took everyone out to Benni Hanna’s for dinner. It’s this really good grill where you get to watch them cook your food right in front of you. The girls loved it and were so good even though it wasn’t geared toward kids. We also found out that Ashley LOVES shrimp. She ate all her own and Blake’s and kept begging everyone else for theirs. It was so good to have the whole family together again! That doesn’t happen very often since we moved to Utah and Thomas moved to Boise.
It’s hard for me to believe Kenzie’s 5 already! It seems like such a short time ago we were struggling to bring her home from the hospital. Now she’s all grown up at 5 going on 16. She’s an amazing girl! She such a great big sister to Ashley and so smart. She loves learning and then trying to teach Ashley what she just learned. She has such a tender heart which serves her well, but also causes a broken heart often when someone says something mean. She understands some things at the age of 5 that I as an adult still don’t completely grasp. Her concept of death has over whelmed me from the time she was 2 and my grandpa died. She’s dealt with my grandpa’s death, Blake’s dad’s death, and the death of a friend of Ashley’s without ever shedding a tear over the loss. She has always been the one to comfort others through the loss and remind everyone that they are in a better place and it’s just their body we’re saying goodbye to. When she was 2 and my grandpa died we went to the hospital right before to say goodbye and be with my grandma. We all had tears in our eyes which Kenzie didn’t understand she walked up to the hospital bed, and held my grandpa’s hand and told him, “Great grandpa it’s Ok, just close your eyes and when you wake up you’ll be with Jesus.” She’s never faltered from this belief.

Happy Birthday Princess! I love yo so much! Thank you for letting me be your mom!