Another birthday

Our third daughter was thrilled to celebrate her fifth birthday. This is her last big one for a while, and she has been looking forward to it for months. Celebrations were complete with a bouncy house (thanks to my in-laws), games, a craft, and great presents.

My parents and the birthday girl.


All the kids after a dress up relay race.

Paint!

I made the cake out of miniature cupcakes.

Yesterday was the last nice weather day for a while. I decided that I'd clean up the yard some and burn a few leaves. I easily started a fire in the yard clippings from the whole year/leaf pile.
I quickly realized that this was going to be quite a time consuming endeavor, so I put out the fire and headed in the house. I later went back outside and noticed that the pile was still smoldering in spots, so I carefully "watered" the hot spots, and once again made sure that everything was okay. I sure didn't want to be the next person to almost burn the neighborhood down.
Rain left over from tropical storm Ida began pouring down and has been pouring ever since. So, imagine my surprise when I looked out our bedroom window this morning and saw this sight through the rain.

The pile has smoldered all day even though we've received around 6 inches of rain. My husband (as far as he and I know) put the fire out again before we headed to church tonight. Hopefully it'll still be out when we get up in the morning.