Clare turns six!!!!

Clare makes her birthday supper.  Her choice: tuna macaroni salad.

Somehow in the midst of packing, moving, and unpacking, the buds and leaves appeared on the trees and our oldest child turned six.  Hers was the first birthday in our new house.

Clare is a good big sister; she plays well with her brother and takes good care of her little sister.  She's good at helping around the house and loves to help in the kitchen.  She enjoys school but still loves weekends.  She doesn't like doing chores on Saturday because "Saturday is supposed to be a fun day!"  She took Welch's fruit snacks for her birthday treat (apparently that's the cool kindergarten thing to do).  Look how proud she is wearing her kindergarten birthday crown:

On Thursday (her real birthday) we ate her special birthday dinner and she opened two presents from us.  We got her a cheap digital watch because we weren't sure how responsible she'd be with it. Sure enough, she lost it on Friday at school and finally found it in the coatroom.  She also got from us, at her request: a bag of giant marshmallows, Cheetos, goldfish crackers and a yellow goldfish snack container.  She's been asking for those things for her birthday since this past fall and she finally made me write them on a list about two months ago.

On Friday we celebrated her birthday with her cousins.  Clare baked her own cake (with help) on Thursday after school and frosted it on Friday.  Then she loaded it with candy.  Needless to say, her cousins were THRILLED to see that cake (although some of them only ate the candy off).

Decorating her Funfetti cake with Funfetti frosting, pink icing, peach rings and sour gummy worms. I'm not sure why we worked so hard spreading the frosting neatly over the top and sides; you couldn't see any of it when she was done.

Clare bought her birthday crown two years ago and the birthday hats at the Dollar Store in January.  She saved them for this day.  Sometimes I forget how BIG birthdays are to a child. I don't even know how old I am most days.

So all in all, Clare had a good birthday.  She also received from us a toolbox with a hammer and nails and a saw, and a little clip-on, LED touch lamp for her bed so she can read at night before she falls asleep.  The lamp and toolbox were huge hits.

And what's a post without mention of the chicks?  These girls got a lot of attention Friday night when the cousins came down to play with them.  Alaina, Karmyn, Bri and Trevor love the chickens.  They spent a long time holding them and playing with them.  Our friendly birds enjoyed the company.

Their favorite place to roost when their cover is off.

These girls are starting to look like real chickens!  They'll go in their coop soon as they're outgrowing their little box.

 And as promised, an interior pic of the house.  This front room is huge; there's more to it that doesn't show in this photo.

Despite a few things that will need to be fixed in the near future, we love our house!  The views are amazing, the layout is so practical: I love the "hidden" toy room, the open kitchen, the big enclosed porch, the basement you can stand up in (!!) and my little office/sewing space upstairs that has only one outlet (old style with only two prongs).  (More outlets are on Matt's to-do-very-soon list.)  But Matt's list of things to do is long these days.  Today he built a compost bin from pallets, cleaned out the chicken coop, and attempted to fix a screen on the upstairs window only to find that it's rotting away and needs more parts.  So life here is busy, but satisfying.  I'm amazed I even found time to write this post, with laundry to be folded and dishes to wash and chickens to care for and four chapters in a book I'm supposed to read for my book club on Tuesday night.