Zoë's birthday party (family edition)

Quick! Let's finish talking about Zoë's birthday before Benjamin comes home from YM camp and we finally celebrate his birthday! 

Phoebe helped me wrap Zoë's birthday presents. We talked the whole time about how we wrap them so they can be a surprise. Why? Because it's fun to have a little surprise every now and again. But the present wrapper's job is very serious because the present wrapper knows what the surprises are and yet must keep that information to themselves. 

Tricky, tricky business, but Phoebe swore she was up to the task.

We brought the presents out. Zoë opened the present from Phoebe first.

"It feels like a rock," Zoë guessed. 

"It is a rock!" Phoebe said.

And it was a rock—a lovely shiny one that Phoebe had chosen from the front garden. Alexander wrote Zoë a lovely little note, which was truly a surprise, and then Zoë felt her other gifts.

"I wonder what this could be..." she said. 

"It's a shirt," Phoebe said, then she revealed each present in turn before sitting back proudly. "Shirt, another shirt, a game called...giants...moving...something or other...I can't remember. But I think I remembered everything else."

"Oh, look..." Zoë said sarcastically, opening her last present. "A game called Giants Moving Tiny Furniture..."

"Phoebe," I said. "You can remember what you wrapped but you're not supposed to tell what they are to the person you wrapped them for!"

I suppose knowing in advance what you got doesn't really diminish the joy of having the thing (only of opening the thing). Oh, I also got Zoë a balance beam! I was going to just order one once we were in Qatar, but the more I looked into it the more complicated it seemed, so I ordered one here and then we'll just...put it in our shipment in a couple of weeks and see it whenever it gets to Qatar. 

It'll be like getting a balance beam twice!

Zoë wanted pie for her birthday. We took pumpkin pie to her friend party (eventually, though it was a bit of an adventure getting it there). We saved a smorgasbord of pies to have at home!

Rachel made a key lime pie, a Carolina beach pie, and a cherry-berry-peach pie for her!

Here's Benjamin lighting the candles:

And for some reason acting like he's really bored of lighting candles even though he begged to do it (wait until she turns twelve, buddy—imagine how much more work that will be):

Here she is while we were singing to her:

And here she is with her pie—no teeth:

And teeth:

And here's Benjamin with a little frog that had plastered itself to the window on the front door and was croaking out a racket:

I fear it's a bit of a "summer of survival" for our family, so our birthday celebrations are rather low-key! Still, we're happy to have helped Zoë ring in her twelfth year. Big things for her in the future—a move half-way around the world and entering the Young Women program in January. Fun times!