Rin's 5th Birthday

5 years ago, Rin was born making us first time parents. I don't want to say we were clueless, but of course we were new to the whole scene.  Both B and I had nieces and nephews that we watched grow up, plus we had some friends who had just had a baby.  Together with those experiences and the parenting class we took from church, we felt as prepared as anybody to raise a child. One year later and a lot of change has happened.  Rin has another younger sibling, a girl this time, Noelle.  Rin loves sharing her room with Ell and is such a great little momma.  The other big news this time is that Rin will be starting Kindergarten this year.  She's so excited and totally ready.  I'm very happy for her and wish I could be a fly on the wall of her classroom.  She's going to rock it!

Here's how her 5th birthday went:
We woke up around 7 like normal.  We let her open her gift from Gran and Papaw because they facetime'd us to sing HBTY to her.  She got this cute pink brush that is supposed to be a detangler.  Then we had breakfast and got dressed, ready to head to the movies.

with friends: Baylor, Grayson, Wes, Rin, Abe, Julia  8/7/13

We saw Madagascar 3 with our friends and then had the Caldwell boys over for lunch.  After rest time, Bella dropped by to give Rin a drawing (they are BFFs) and played a short while.  Rin got to pick the dinner and invite one friend over for dinner so she picked beignets & Aiden.  Sheree' dropped Aiden off around 5:30 and they kids played for a while so B could cook.  Before dinner we let Rin play her new game Zingo, that her brothers got her for her birthday.  We first played it at Grayson's house several weeks before and she really wanted her own game.  It's very fun.  After dinner we let Rin open her presents and then played Abe's Bug Game.  We played games until it was time for Aiden to go home.  Rin had an awesome day and didn't want it to end.

Rin is extremely sweet.  She's very loving and kind.  Of course she can argue with her brothers, but she has a very tender heart.  She's very much a people pleaser and needs/desires words of affirmation.  For a 5 year old, she's very assertive and opinionated, which we love!  We are very confident that she will have a great year in school and won't be afraid to speak up for herself.  She's not shy and actually very outgoing when it comes to meeting new kids.  We have a new neighbor named Owen and Rin was the first to go meet Owen and his mom.  We expect great things from this little gift.

As I pray for my kids each day, my prayer for Rin is that she will start to really comprehend who Jesus is and what he did for us.  She knows the information about dying on the cross to save us, but she doesn't 'get it' yet.  We talk all the time, but my specific prayer for her is that she will live it at school.  We've talked about how she will say her blessing before she eats at school and that she still will pray even though the teacher won't make everyone pray; I pray that we are the Lord is setting a firm foundation for Rin because public schools need shining stars!