Maya's 7th Birthday

Maya turned 7 on January 24th. We played it pretty low-key this year but we've started a new tradition with birthdays...we make the kids go on a scavenger hunt to find their gifts. They start with a clue and the have to follow the clues to find each present. Maya LOVED it. It made it so much more fun and memorable! Her big gift was a new bike, which she really needed as she had definitely outgrown her old one. I am attaching a couple of pictures of the hunt and celebration. Maya's second favorite part of her birthday was her dad's very sweet idea. We told Maya that she could pick any game she wanted to play and we would all play it as a family. She told me that what she really wanted was to play school with her being the teacher, but she kind of said she knew that was probably not going to happen, so she said we could just play a board game instead. When I told Troy about this conversation he arranged for all of us to be in Maya's school class, but surprised her by setting up desks for each of us in Maya's room and having the boys seated at their "desks" when she came in her room. She was so excited! Actually at first she was embarrassed and was being all shy, but it didn't take more than a minute for her to get into it and start teaching class. It was so cute! We even had P.E. - we went downstairs and Maya made everyone dance to the end of Mamma Mia - for anyone that has seen that movie, they sing and dance to a couple of songs at the very end of the movie - anyway, Troy even gave the teacher an apple... brown-noser.