Happy Birthday Delaney

Happy 9th  Birthday Delaney dear!!!!!  A few weeks ago I visited with a friend whom I had deployed with in Afghanistan. He ask me about "groundhog",  at first I did not know who he was referring too. Then thinking back I realized that when my unit was down at Fort Bragg training, Delaney had been born. I was given a three day pass to go and see her. When the guys saw her for the first time, she had fat cheeks and very brilliant blue eyes, somehow the name "ground hog" was applied and stuck, well, for a brief time. It is hard to believe that was nine years ago.

Brianne has really taken up with our family piano teacher Sue Zander. Here she was conducting a little nose to nose interview.

Because her birthday was smack dab in the middle of the week, on Wednesday (church activity night) we had to celebrate her special day using creativity.
On Monday, March 25, we had family over to join her in a bit of birthday cake.  She dearly loves her piano teacher and invited her and her husband to join us too.
March 27, Wednesday...her actual birthday, she got to choose her favorite breakfast.  She adores rice pudding, some of her siblings do not.  She was quite consciousnesses of their needs and asked for sausage, egg and cheese biscuits for them and donuts.  She figured everyone tastes would be accounted for in this fashion.  I said no to the biscuits and found a baked donuts recipe on Allrecipes.  They turned out good....but nothing like a real donut.  She was happy anyway.  it was all good.

On Friday the real "date" celebration took place.  Delaney got to choose where she wanted to eat dinner and one activity afterward. This activity could be going to a movie. Based upon the fact that I had just worked off of a midnight shift and would most likely fall asleep in a dark theater, she wisely chose bowling.

Delaney had to arm wrestle me for this small dish of ice cream. She won!!! Actually, this was her chosen desert. It was called something like Madison Mud Slide or something like that. It was made of some chocolate ice cream, chocolate syrup, and in the center a big ball of unbaked cookie dough and lots of brownies. Delaney and Vicki loved it.

While bowling, she was winning for most the of game, yet in end Vicki pulled ahead by a whopping four points.  Clearly none of us will be pro material, but we had lots of fun.