Happy Birthday, Sadie!

I cannot believe my oldest niece, Sadie, turned eleven today! Where in the world has the time gone? It just seems wrong that my sister (who is three years younger than me) can possibly be old enough to have an eleven year old! I still think of her as eleven! LOL

For her birthday, she wanted to have a dance party, if her Uncle Jeff would be so kind as to come and DJ for her and her group of friends. When I asked him if he would do it, he got the biggest grin on his face and then promptly called my sister to ask what "toys" he should bring! Needless to say, come Monday morning, anyone who didn't get invited to her party is going to be J-E-A-L-O-U-S! The girls all had so much fun- they laughed and sang and did gymnastic moves for almost 6 hours! Granted, they would all disappear for about 10-15 minutes at a time to go reapply their "make-up" but they would pop back in and dance until they were sweaty. I took so many fun pictures - I can't wait to make some pages... the ideas are endless and just swirling in my head!

After the dance party, most of the girls stayed for a sleepover. Sadie said they stayed up until 4 am doing make up and hair and watching TV. I picked her up today about noon, so we could go have a girls' day and go shopping for her birthday. We started out at Rue 21, where she got a bunch of shirts and some jewelry. Then, we headed out to Michigan City, where we hit Justice, Gap, Hollister and a bunch of other places. She finally settled on getting a skirt, a pair of super cute shorts and a shirt from Hollister. She even spent some of her own birthday money at Bed, Bath & Beyond.

After shopping, it has kind of become our tradition to go to the Lake and just veg - so we went and ate dinner at Swingbelly's first and then made sand castles and walked along the lake front, talking and just having a fun time. I hated to have to take her home... but we had such a good day!