In the past year, Anna has continued to grow and mature in many aspects of her life. She has made some amazing progress with her skills (more on all that in a later post) and is looking forward to seeing what additional progress she can make this summer. With her increased physical capabilities come increased responsibility and expectations. Sometimes these transitions are smoother than others.
Anna still has the ability to have wisdom beyond her years, but she is also still just a kid. Her favorite activities are creating art with different pattern making tools, playing with her siblings, playing games, solving math puzzles, and helping when she can. She's come a long way.
We had been prepping Anna for having an extended birthday celebration, due to the fact that we were arriving home from our trip the day before her birthday. But we were still able to celebrate much on her actual special day.
Cards and gifts were enjoyed in the morning.
During the morning hours, the kids helped prepare and freeze peapods and broccoli, in the midst of all of those loads of laundry. At some point, we managed to make Anna's requested birthday dessert, homemade chocolate cake. (I failed to get two matching 1s for the cake, so we pulled out a couple of mismatched 1s. No big deal :)
Anna and Ethan came along for a quick run to the grocery store so we could get a few supplies for Anna's requested birthday dinner. After coming down off of our vacation trip, I'd say it was a pretty good birthday for our oldest.
Just before we left for our trip, we were disappointed to learn that we would probably be missing the entire strawberry season here in southern Wisconsin. However, another one of Anna's birthday surprises was that our favored strawberry farm was scheduled to be OPEN for picking on Thursday, June 28! So we hauled ourselves out of bed early that morning and spent an hour or so picking 15 lbs. of berries.
Kate was my biggest helper this year.
Anna stuck with it for a long time.
But strawberry picking is not Ethan's favorite activity ...
That afternoon the kids helped me make some strawberry jam! Kate and I managed another quick trip to get more strawberries on Saturday morning to round out that harvest. Hooray!
The final aspect of our family's celebration of Anna's birthday was a trip to the Kalahari. Before our trip, we'd offered to Anna a planned birthday party, or a quick family visit to our favorite Dells destination. After weighing her options, Anna chose the Kalahari, so we snatched up one of their great summer deals and made a quick trip on Sunday-Monday.
After early church on Sunday, we packed everything up, had an early lunch, and made the quick drive to arrive by the early afternoon.
We were able to get in a round of mini-golf and a trip through the ropes course before driving into Lake Delton for the Tommy Bartlett Show.
Anna participated in the mini-golf without her walker or crutches (just Mom), so she was ready for a little break while the others did the ropes course.
Even though we have been experiencing hot and humid weather here for awhile, the outdoor waterski show was quite pleasant. Shade and a little breeze make a huge difference.
None of us had ever seen a Tommy Bartlett Show, so we were very impressed by many parts of it.
By the time the show was over, we were famished. Although Matt and I were hoping for a "sit down" restaurant, birthday girl choose Culver's. Oh, well :) When our bellies were filled, we were ready to crash for the night. It's a good thing we did, too, because the next day we all used plenty of energy!
After breakfast at Cracker Barrel, we got ourselves ready for the opening of the indoor water park at 9:30 a.m. At that time of day on a Monday, there are NO lines. We did the tall waterslides 6 times in a row without any waiting. (Anna climbing the stairs 4 of those times, with one hand on the railing and one hand holding my hand.) Then the ladies in the family played in the wave pool while the boys explored the medium water slides. We managed another three trips down the big slides before we decided to try the outdoor waterpark. By that point, Anna crashed on a lounge chair, but Kate and Ethan found a second reserve of energy and tackled the medium water slides again and again.
We rounded out our water park time with a few trips down the big outdoor slides. Boy, those are fast! In the future, we now know that our family can handle hours upon hours of water park time. Good to know.
By the time we changed and found a place to eat our picnic lunch, it was 1:30 p.m. Yikes!
After a bit of refueling, though, the kids wanted to play at the playground. Seriously!?
But birthday girl wanted to make sure we used our passes to the Timbavati Wildlife Park before we went home. So, on another hot, hot day, we did, but stuck to the shade as much as we could.
We all got a kick out of the llamas who had been very recently shaved :)
By the time we reached the sun, the kids were ready to be done.
Well, except Kate. She would have stayed there for a few more hours.
We made a quick stop at Culver's to get our ice cream that we didn't get the night before.
And this boy was OUT about 5 minutes after he was done with his dessert. His body was t-i-r-e-d.
A very short, but very fun, birthday celebration trip for Miss Anna and family.
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