Brooklyn’s 9th Birthday Festivities

I’m writing this 4 months late (June 2022), and it’s still hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that Brooklyn is 9 years old. It just sounds too big. Recently, I realized that in 5 years, she will be getting ready to start high school. Mind blown. Here’s the recap of how we celebrated her birthday this year:

On Saturday, February 12th, we drove to Franklin, TN for the day. We had offered Brooklyn the choice between having a birthday party with friends or a day trip with the family. I threw out the idea of going to the American Girl Doll store in Franklin, and she chose that over a party. It surprised me a bit because she hasn’t shown a ton of interest in her doll, Julie, but kids are unpredictable sometimes. I wasn’t sad about her choosing the day trip instead of the party…definitely less stress on my end! ;) None of us had ever been to the American Girl Doll store before, so this was going to be a first for our whole family.

We left the house around 9:30 AM to drive up there, and the girls were ready with their dolls :)

When we got into town, we headed straight to eat brunch/lunch at First Watch, a restaurant Travis had heard of but none of us had ever tried. It was delicious!! The girls all loved their pancakes.

Abigail guzzled her apple juice before the food even came, and we got a chuckle out of that. When we asked her how she drank that much juice so quickly, she replied, “It’s because I’m a sucker upper!” :)

Yum!

Despite filling up on apple juice, Abigail also ate 2 pieces of bacon and ALL her pancakes. This girl rarely eats that much unless it’s something like pancakes…

Savannah was also a member of the clean plate club, and Brooklyn came close!

Travis and I tried the “million dollar bacon”, which was delicious. It was a great way to kick off our time in Franklin.

We headed over to the mall next. It was very busy there! We finally found a place to park and walked over to the store. The girls were so excited. It was so neat to walk around and look at all the things they had. Brooklyn and Savannah were excited to find Julie and Samantha in the store and look at all their things.

Abigail brought her baby doll, Lucy, along who isn’t a Bitty Baby but is a similar size. We gave the girls a budget and let them pick out what they wanted to buy. The store was so big that it took a while to look at everything.

One special thing that we did while we were there was allowing Brooklyn and Savannah to get their dolls’ hair done in the doll salon. Savannah has my old Samantha doll, and we weren’t sure if her hair was in good enough shape to have a hairstyle done, but they said it was!

It was really fun to watch the stylists work, and both dolls’ hair turned out so cute!!

Brooklyn picked a unicorn braid for Julie, and Savannah picked two braided buns for Samantha…

They were so thrilled with how it all turned out!

The stylist tied ribbons around Samantha’s buns, and Savannah got to pick out the color of the ribbons. Samantha’s hair definitely looks much better in the buns that it did before we got there.

Julie’s hair still looked good in its original braid since Brooklyn hadn’t played with her too much, but the unicorn braid looks adorable too!

We stopped at Gigi’s Cupcakes for a treat before leaving Franklin to head home. We all enjoyed the day, even Travis! ;)

Savannah was the only one of the girls who didn’t fall asleep on the way home! The girls got home that evening and immediately wanted to play with their dolls and the things they’d bought. I can definitely see us going back sometime for another shopping trip since it’s an easy day trip.

The next day was February 13th, Brooklyn’s actual birthday. We celebrated at Sunday lunch at Tyler and Alisha’s house.

I guess we should have made sure her hair was in a ponytail before she blew out the candles ;) Her hair didn’t catch on fire, but it looked too close for comfort!

She is getting so old that it takes several breaths to blow out the large number of candles…haha

Finally! :) Brooklyn picked out the colors for the cake, including the yellow sunflowers on top. I love how easy it is to order on Publix’s website. It tasted yummy too!

I loved how the other kids gathered around to watch Brooklyn open her gifts after lunch.

One of the things Brooklyn asked for was a dog poster with lots of different breeds. She was very excited to get it hung in her room later!

Of course, our resident bookworm was excited to add more books to her collection as well.

It was a fun afternoon!

Brooklyn’s final celebration was on the following Saturday, February 19th, when Rae Rae and Paw came to visit for a few hours.

Abigail was excited to show Rae Rae and Paw that she had learned how to ride her bike, and the girls all rode around in the driveway before we ate lunch.