Lucky Number Seven

Monday was my daughter's seventh birthday!!

Only a week before this big event I was getting ready to search the yellow pages for my local band of roving gypsies (but let's be honest - who has paper phone books just laying around anymore? Also, I learned over the summer that 'Gypsy' is a derogatory term and so I didn't know what category to look under if I even found a phone book, anyway).

After a desperate cry to the universe for help with my unruly, head-spinning child, however, she suddenly went back to being the goofy, sweet, farting little ray of sunshine-with-occasional-dark, dark-clouds that I've come to know and love over the last eight years of my life.

Due to odd scheduling and traveling family and all of those other fun quirks that make up attempts at celebrating the birthday of a dual-homed child, Evie got a shit-ton of festivities this year. I don't really think she minded too much.

The first one was with family - we were lucky enough to have some out-of-towner cousins with us...although, being babies and all they were too young for Evie's requested main event:

What's going on here, you ask?

Duh - it's a pie-eating contest, of course!

The next day, we went to the Oakland Zoo. In case you were wondering, the Oakland Zoo is far superior to the San Francisco Zoo, in that only the Chimpanzees looked sad, as opposed to all of the animals. Now you know.

The obligatory Sun-in-Eyes pose

Even though we were in a wonderland of exotic, furry creatures, the kids spent most of their time chasing each other across grassy knolls, playing hide & seek, climbing on things...

Yay Zoo!

And, after the zoo closed, just spinning and spinning and spinning in the parking lot.

Spin! Faster!!

Finally, we had a quiet dinner (steak and mashed potatoes - again, per her request) at home on Evie's actual birthday. Earlier in the day I'd baked her a weird cake, which I tried to disguise as awesome under a lot of fruit. She totally bought it. 

One Happy Girl

It was great - all of it. This kid is clearly going to rock being seven. Sorry, gyps--er, I mean, Romani people...I'm keeping this one for a while longer, she's the freaking best!