On the night of Samantha’s birthday we had to get all fancy and go out to dinner of course! Birthday girl’s choice? Bricktop’s!

After dinner we celebrated with presents and ice cream cake!!

GJ’s always nice to the siblings too! 🙂

This little girl just hates attention…ha!

Happy Birthday Samantha!! Hope all your wishes come true!

We had the best weekend celebrating our 8 year old!! The fun started on Friday morning with lots of balloons, of course!

My 8 year old!!

Thumbs up to a great start to the birthday!

The only way the day could get better? It was PJ day too!

I went up and had lunch with the birthday girl. I took her Moe’s and Crumbl cookies. It’s always fun to have lunch with a bunch of cute 2nd graders!

Love celebrating this cute girl!!!

Oh, boy! EIGHT is great!! It’s Samantha’s birthday and I cannot wait to celebrate my ray of sunshine!

From this precious baby girl (born on her due date at 1:04pm)…

To this happy one year old….

To this perfectly perfect two year old….

To this lively three year old…

To this sweet and sassy four year old!

To this sunshiney five year old…

To this bright light of a six year old….

to this amazing seven year old…

to EIGHT and so so great!

This happy, fierce little girl brings such joy to our family. She’s full of smiles and sunshine and I cannot imagine how dull our lives would be without her.

In many ways, not much as changed since seven – she still loves to watch YouTube on her iPad and loves to add songs to her playlist on Spotify. She’s the headband queen with the prettiest, longest perfectly wavy blonde hair! She prefers to wear dresses every day and has some pretty strong opinions about her outfits! She’s a girly girl and loves to get her nails done, put on a face mask, and wear makeup.

She’s hilarious with attitude and a little bit of sass but there’s just enough little girl left in her and I love it. Nothing makes me happier than to find her up in her room playing with her Barbies or LOLs. My sweet girl.

Samantha is tough and I think that’s because she holds her own with her brothers daily. She can scream louder than them so she usually wins! ha! As I said last year, she will shine her light on Robert now and then but she is a Momma’s girl through and through! That is even more true now! She can’t wait to get home from school each day and give me a running, jumping hug! Oh, she loves me and I love her every bit as much right back.

Samantha is not afraid to work hard and give it her all in whatever sport she’s playing. She killed it at swim this summer. Soccer is still her favorite and she’s got some real talent with her footwork. She was an impressive cheerleader this fall and is now proving to be pretty darn scrappy and good at basketball too! She’s almost got her backhandspring at tumbling and she complains weekly about having to go to dance but enjoys it once she’s there! She’s got grit and determination and I LOVE to watch her play whatever sport she’s playing!

She’s having a great year at school in 2nd grade and adores her teacher, Mrs. Brown. She’s made good buddies with some of the girls in her class and has lots of friends. I really never hear about any sort of drama at school from her. She has her BFFs but is friends with everyone.

This awesome little girl is zipping through life and I’m just happy to be along for the ride!

A few questions with my favorite EIGHT year old!

Favorite book? Guts
Favorite TV show? Henry Danger
Favorite movie? Pirates of the Caribbean
Favorite color? Turquoise
Favorite song? Eyes on You
Favorite number? 8
Favorite restaurant? Bricktop’s
Favorite thing to eat? Mac and cheese
Favorite friend? Frances
Favorite toy? iPad
Favorite animal? Zebra
Favorite dessert? GJs Cookie dough
Favorite sport? Soccer
What do you want to be when you grow up? Just like momma

I so love this little girl. We are so thankful she brought her sunshine into our world eight years ago! She is and will always be the biggest dream come true.

Happy birthday Samantha! We love you so much!!!