Today was Harriet's 4th Birthday AND Dale's 1st Birthday.  Our girls are birthday twins. For the past several days I've been trying to get a good picture of them together, to no avail. Winfield took this picture at 8:15 this morning on our way to Party City to pick out balloons. A couple of years ago we started a tradition that the kids get to pick out a huge mylar balloon from Party City on their birthday.  It's a really fun tradition.  Harriet chose a Darth Vader balloon and the kids chose a Strawberry Shortcake for Dale.  Unfortunately Darth Vader escaped into space about 20 minutes after his arrival at our house.  It was a very sad moment. The kids helped decorate cupcakes. I have no idea why people think that cake a a reasonable medium for sculpture.  We're considering submitting these for Artprize. Have we ever mentioned how awesome our new neighbors are!  So randomly they set up a rope and kid size harness and were swinging kids from the tree.  So awesome.  At one point in the middle of this swinging a stranger wandered in the back yard and asked if this was a day-care.  Which is really funny in itself since at the time we had 11 kids under 7 playing in our 2 back yards.  I'm not so sure that the rope-harness-swing would be quite up to day care code though?? Lighting the birthday candles.  Dale was a bit confused but quite pleased at the same time. Singing. Dale's first taste of both dessert ad chocolate.  Not a bad introduction. Princess Leia in cupcake form (constructed by Harriet, Win and Mom) This picture just makes me laugh. Dale got a shape sorter. Harriet really liked her new shirt.  She's sleeping in it right now. Thank you Samuel L Jackson for having a purple light saber.  She's been wanting one for quite a while.   It was a really fun evening!