Happy 8th, Emma!

Our oldest child is now eight! Here is what we did to celebrate. The night before Emma's birthday we had a family dinner with Ben's side of the family. She got some wonderful gifts, including a scrapbook kit! She LOVED putting that together over spring break.

She requested a cherry cheesecake for her birthday cake. My cheesecake-loving dad would be proud! :)

She also got some super cute clothes from relatives, including this darling horse shirt from Grandma!

We got Emma a new bike. She's used her bike for 4+ years and has outgrown it.

For one of Emma's gifts, we arranged to have her go to a nearby ranch and ride a horse for an hour. Rachel and Lauren came too. The ranch owner was great with the kids: taught them the basics of riding, how to get on and off, how to steer, etc. She even set up a little obstacle course with cones for them to practice guiding the horse around. This was the highlight of Emma's birthday and she has asked several times since if we can go back and ride again.

The girls rode a horse named Sadie, 22 years old, which is apparently rather old in horse years. She was gentle and calm and perfect for kids to ride. Emma was in 7th heaven! She even got to lead Sadie back to her stall after and give her a treat.

Lauren loved it too!

Rachel's ride. She was pretty nervous about riding such a big horse, but once she was on she couldn't stop smiling!

After horseback riding, we picked up the boys and Dad at home and headed down to Provo. We stuffed ourselves at Tucano's, went to Rock Canyon Park to play for awhile, and then headed home with an ice-cream stop at Macey's on the way. The weather was gorgeous and we had such a fun time together. Emma at age 8: *Loves horses, of course. :) And she loves to pretend to be a horse, with Luke being the horse-catcher. Too funny! *She REALLY likes to play school with Rachel. She plans out these little lessons and activities and Rachel loves it (most of the time...). :) *Likes to study and learn. She loves to research things in books and on the internet and she even takes notes! *Loves watching movies and eating popcorn. Mulan is a favorite. She looks forward to our Friday family movie night every week! *Still loves trying lots of different foods. *Is a fantastic reader and speller! We love our Emma and can't believe she is EIGHT!