Ruby's celebrations...

We were in UT for her actual birthday, so we got to spend the whole day with just our little family. Wonderful!

To start out the morning, we went with Chris' aunt and uncle on a tour of the underground tunnel system connecting various LDS church offices, the conference center, temple, etc. It was really interesting! His aunt and uncle are volunteering for a year or so to run translation efforts for all the broadcasts made by the church to church members worldwide. They are over 12 languages, but the broadcasts are in many more languages than that. It's a full time job! It was amazing how many of the languages I had never heard of. I even know someone who translates in Guarani, an indigenous language of Peru and Uruguay. We had lunch with them in the church office building cafeteria, where they "work" and enjoyed their company and were grateful for the time they offered us during their busy day.

After that, we went rollerskating as a family. It was a Monday during school hours, so we had free reign of the joint, which was really fun. It was Ruby's first time rollerskating, and SHE WAS IN HEAVEN. I was loving her joy as she skated around and around to all the tween music they were playing. I was a little sad she didn't get to share that fun with friends, but she didn't seem to mind. It was also a bounce house, so Alice played in that a lot while Ruby mostly skated. The day couldn't have ended any better in Ruby's opinion. Alice fell asleep in the car and went to bed, and we watched "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe," together. She is mildly obsessed with "The Chronicles of Narnia" at the moment.

We had big plans for a theme birthday party with her friends the weekend that followed, but we came home to a ruined house and had to live in a hotel, so plans were (thankfully) scaled way back. We wound up inviting friends to the hotel, they let us use the breakfast room for the party part and we went swimming.

Ruby overheard me telling a friend that we had to nix the theme due to our circumstances, and she started to cry. I asked her, "what would make this party a Narnia party?" It turned out that she just wanted to color some Narnia pictures to put around the room, have Narnia cupcakes and play pin the tail on Azlan. Whew! Done. That was simple enough!

So we had a really nice time. I think like 18 kids came. We swam, had pizza, cake and ice cream, opened presents and played pin the tail on Azlan. Ruby had a blast as did her friends. My friend Lauri started a cupcake business and she saved the day since I couldn't make a cake and made some cute, snowy, Narnia cupcakes.

Ruby got a Lucy costume from Chris' parents and she wore it proudly...not just at the party, but for days and days!

I always forget to get a group shot before some of the friends leave. Here is a group of the kids who came to wish Ruby a happy birthday!