Ava's Birthday Weekend

I can't believe Ava is 6 years old. 6 sounds so old to me, but we sure had a great weekend celebrating Ava's birthday. Saturday the 16th was Ava's official birthday, but Simon was in Aspen timing a race so he hosted Ava's party with her friends on Sunday. However, we spent all of Saturday celebrating her big day as well.

To kick off the morning Ava woke up and came to my room to tell me she found a trail of streamers around the house that started from her room. After I explained to Ava that it might lead her to something special for her birthday, she got really excited. Ava quickly changed out of her PJ's when she saw that I was taking out the video camera to record her following the streamers that lead her to a present in the garage. See the cute video below as she gave the trampoline box a big hug.

Ava 6th Birthday from RunColo on Vimeo.

After a yummy waffle breakfast Ava wanted to head out for a bike ride so I tried to keep up with the kids walking, while they road fast up ahead. They stopped to rest under a tree while waiting for me to catch up.The kids are always excited when Dad comes home, but Ava was especially excited that afternoon because it meant she could now open her presents from family members.Dylan had fun too trying on Ava's birthday hat and playing with all her new toys. Then it was off to dinner (Ava's choice of course) with DQ blizzards to follow.Sunday finally arrived for Ava's birthday party bash. Grampy and Sharona drove down to wish Ava a fun and special day.Ava kept with her trampoline theme and chose for her party this year to be at Jumpstreet where 22 friends and siblings (including Ava and Dylan) came to celebrate Ava's birthday.Dylan had some friends to play with too and he was so tired by the end of the party that he fell asleep on the very short car ride home.Ava made sure to let us know she had tons of fun at her party and......hopefully so did all her buddies too.After lots of jumping the kids enjoyed pizza and of course......ice cream cake (Ava's favorite).After hours of jumping fun we came home to unwrap presents. Which lasted a while only because Ava really took her time to carefully look over each gift, learn what it was, and read all the cards herself. There were some really creative fun gifts (I was impressed) and Sharona and I found it fun, while......the dad's got a little bored and both fell asleep (or maybe they were tired from the whole Jumpstreet craziness).After naps, the rest of the evening continued with much more trampoline fun...... and Ava of course gave her brother lots of turns too.

Happy Birthday Ava! You are turning into quite the little lady and we're so proud of you. You are still our fearless (but cautious) leader who is kind, friendly, smart, beautiful, caring, motherly, a quick learner, talkative, very observant, independent, strong willed and witty. You can really make your dad and me laugh pretty hard these days and you sure do love your family deeply. You're still a little know-it-all, but you work really hard to be way more polite about it now and your hard work has really paid off. You take directions much better over the last year as long as they are clear, matter of fact directions followed with a simple and clear consequence if you don't follow the direction because you love to kindly test your limits and question the why of everything. I love our long, night time conversations and I love that you are still such an amazing sister to your little brother. We couldn't ask for a better daughter. We love you Punchy!