Anne's 5th Birthday

Today was a low-key birthday for our firstborn. Lydia woke us all up at 6AM, which was a tad early for the rest of us girls, but we made the best of it and piled in our bed for Anne to open her presents from us. She got two books and a Doris Day movie, so there will be lots of new songs to sing around here soon. =) Her daddy took her to the local bakery for breakfast. She was so excited about their date, she would have gone at 6 if she could have! We ate Doener Kebabs for lunch with our good friend,Lou Priolo, who is here doing a marriage conference at our church. The girls were equally excited about seeing Mr. Lou and eating Doeners. Anne easily polished off her half Doener and fries. The girl has two hollow legs! Since our entire family is on antibiotics due to ear infections/sinus infections/bronchitis, Anne and I spent the afternoon naptime snuggling on the sofa watching her new movie. I noticed the sweetest thing lying next to her with our legs outstretched--we have the exact same feet! It struck me as being so incredible that this little girl was a part of me and God thought she should have my same feet! Maybe I'll blog about that another time...=)

I've spent a lot of the day thinking about her birthday 5 years ago. Brent and I reminisced about that early morning drive to the hospital, me smiling happily before the induction began, not knowing what lay ahead of me, lots of pain, my mom coming into the room just in time for the delivery, my doctor handing me my firstborn, the incredible joy of finally seeing our Anne-girl, and realizing that life had changed forever for us.

We give thanks to the Lord today for His gift to us of our sweet Anne. Of the 6 children He has given us, He chose this girl to be our firstborn, the one to have difficulty nursing, the one we were probably too uptight with at first, the one with whom I'm having to learn how to teach a child to read, the one who has quite a "zest for life" as her Opa says, and the one who tells us we need Jesus.

We love our Anne-girl and are so happy to be her parents!