Happy 6th Birthday!!!

Charlotte is six.  Wow!  We can hardly believe it!  In some ways it feels like not very long ago she looked like this:

But in some ways it feels right that she is six now.  She's growing up and becoming such a lovely young lady.  We want to share some pictures of her birthday celebrations with you, so without further ado, here they are!

As always, the birthday is celebrated with berry picking!  This year we picked strawberries at Firefly Berries on the 4th of July.

 Someone enjoyed holding the bucket for a while...  

 This same someone also enjoyed having a big sister feed her many, many strawberries!

Forty-five minutes of picking = 2 full buckets and 4 full tummies.

A birthday party needs a cake, and this year it was a pony cake!  Previously, she's had a puppy cake, bee cake, kitty cake, butterfly cake, and bunny cake.  The pony cake is the only one I have an actual shaped pan for, so it was kind of exciting not to have to carve the cake this year!

 Cousins Liya and Linnea with Charlotte at the kids table.  There was a lot of playing and laughing, but not a lot of eating going on!

 Who is this big big kid?!

 Party guests.  The rowdy grown up table.  :)

 Charlotte wanted to sit by her cousins, even though her plate of food had to stay on the other side!

 Mercy LOVED those balloons!

 Mercy got Charlotte matching shirts for her birthday.  They LOVE to match!

 Charlotte was obviously excited about the new toy horses!

 New horse books to go with the toy horses!

 All the cousins got matching pajamas from Grandpa John and Grandma Sharon just like when my sisters and I were little!

 Poor pony...

 Uncle Travis brought fireworks to celebrate!

 Grandpa John and Grandma Sharon with the girls.  We're so lucky to live just down the street from them!

 I think this might be the best picture of Mercy smiling that we've ever gotten!  She loves Linnea!

 Family walk.

 And family games!

 And family dollhouse...

That was all on the 4th of July, the day before her actual birthday.  On the 5th we had a quieter day.  Daddy had to work, so we had a special morning together with breakfast and snuggles.

Then it was off to Caribou to have a free birthday drink with Auntie Kate.  Of course, in matching zebra shirts that were Mercy's gift to Charlotte!

And I will leave you with this picture while baking a cake for her friend party.  Let's just say that my second attempt at a pony cake was not as successful as the first.  We may have gone in a different direction cake-wise after this episode.  I will post pictures from her friend party tomorrow!