Eliana is 9!

Our Eliana is now nine years old!  It's hard to believe that almost a decade has passed already.

This year, on her birthday, we happened to have been helping out at a week-long high school camp that our church is involved in.  So instead of having cake, we had popsicles!  This was appropriate because it was very hot at this camp located in the high desert of Oregon.  Sometimes it was in the high 90's during the day, and we were there on a "cool" year!

We sang happy birthday to her at this impromptu party.

After coming home, Eliana got a couple of presents.  One was a pair of boots that she wanted.

She also wanted some clothes for her doll.

A couple of weeks later, we organized a "real" birthday party for her where she got to invite friends over.  As is a tradition at our house, we always make the Brazilian dessert brigadeiros, which are essentially fudge in the shape of little balls covered with sprinkles.  First you have to cook it on the pan.  She recently has learned how to make her one scrambled eggs in a pan and so was allowed to stir the brigadeiro "batter".

And here we are rolling them into balls.

The next day, her friends came over for the party!  We hung up a piñata and the littlest ones got to whack at it first.  

Here is Gabe swinging at it.

Karina tried her best too.  Each kid had three tries.

Eliana got a good whack at it!

Eventually it got demolished and the kids rushed in to grab the candy.

Eliana decided that the theme for her party would be "camping".  And so for dinner, the kids roasted their own hot dogs.  Because we don't have a fire pit, we put charcoal in a clay pot instead, which worked just fine.

We got soda, which might be Karina's most favorite thing in the entire world, and you can see her guzzling down the last dregs of a ginger ale 2L bottle.

Here is Xiao Yu chillin'.

Eliana also deemed that her party would have an egg-on-a-spoon race.  So we hard boiled some eggs, formed two teams, and they were off!

Some were more calm than others.

Gabe dropped his several times and had to re-start over and over.

Then it was time to open presents.  Gabe sure is excited!

Eliana got various presents: a pencil in the shape of a huge lollipop, American Girl scuba diving and swimsuit set, and a scooter to ride outdoors.

After that, it was time for s'mores.  So they headed on back to the fire.

And finally it was time to eat cake.  However, Eliana wanted strawberry shortcake instead and so that's what we had.  

Blow!

How many kids can you fit into a little house?  We have a little toy house in our backyard and the kids stuffed themselves in here.

And to finish of the evening, we set up our tent in the backyard.  In keeping with the camping theme, Eliana wanted to sleep outside in the tent with her friends.  Karina helped setting it up.

And they crawled in, and got to watch a movie till late at night.  After it was over, they got into their sleeping bags and fell asleep.  Elvin also set up his little backpacking tent outside and slept there just to make sure things were OK overnight!

So that was Eliana's ninth birthday!  We can't believe she is getting so big so quickly, before we know it, she'll probably be a teenager!