Emily’s 10 Birthday

Over the past few days we have celebrated Emily Grace turning 10!

I wanted to document it all with a blog post so I always remember it.

Thursday afternoon she invited some of her friends over to swim and then a sleepover.

When Emily does something she believes in the philosophy of go big or go home. She ended up inviting 12 girls to come celebrate her birthday with her and she would’ve invited a few more if I would’ve let her, but I had to draw a line somewhere.

Having a summer birthday it’s hard to get everyone on the same schedule, but she had 11 friends that came to celebrate her. Some had to leave early to go play softball and couldn’t spend the night and some left for a few hours to play softball and then came back.

These girls were so much fun!

They swam and swam and swam.

Ate pizza on the trampoline.

Played volleyball, went to the park, and just “chilled”.

Finally when everyone was back together for the evening we opened presents and had cake/ice-cream!

Even our sweet neighbor that Emily adores came over and played with the girls! That definitely made Emily’s night. Thanks Miss Alexa!

I’m not sure what time the girls finally fell asleep but they finished the evening with watching a movie and popcorn.

They were all picked up the next morning by 10 and I enjoyed some much needed quiet time!

I love that my girls have a great group of friends and love hearing laughter and giggling coming from my basement.

On Emily’s real birthday we surprised her with a new bike she’s been wanting and told her we were going to Springfield for the day.

She thought we were going to go to Bass Pro and shop with some of her birthday money, but in reality we were surprising her with:

Maxwell Kramer Bolin, known as Max!

Emily has been BEGGING us for a golden doodle for probably the past 6 months. We’ve always said NO and didn’t think much of it.

When we saw how persistent she was with wanting one, we decided to research them and instantly fell in love with this breed of dog.

We weren’t able to keep the puppy a complete surprise because Emily was wearing Liz’s Apple Watch and a friend texted Liz if we got the puppy yet and Emily saw the text. We had to end up telling her where we were going but she was still SO excited!

She had three puppies to choose from and chose the smallest of the three.

He has been so precious and such a good dog so far!

Happy doesn’t know what to think of Max yet, but I’m hoping they will be best buds soon.

Right now he’s only 3 months and he will get A LOT bigger, but we are already in love with him.

I hope Emily always knows how special she is to us and that we love her so much!

~Jen