Happy Birthday Emily!

Birthdays in our family seem to happen during big moves lately. Remember how we postponed Elinor's birthday last year? So sad.

Emily's birthday was yesterday and I think she had a pretty fun day. She was greeted by a birthday crown and a pack of birthday cake M&M's at her place when she came downstairs in the morning. And me. I greeted her too. :) Pancakes with Nutella, fruit, whipped cream, and syrup were for breakfast, after which she opened a card and one present.

This was a joint gift from Joseph and me and Grandma Oba. Em was ecstatic - she's been eyeing this Lego set for a long time.

She spent a lot of her spare time throughout the day working on it.

For lunch we visited Joseph at Google. This is the outside of the building he works in. There's a cute candy-themed statue for each of the different android platforms that have been released.

 Once inside the building we helped ourselves to the free Odwalla juices they had available to all in a little fridge by the front desk, raided the candy basket, donned our Google guest badges, and headed to one of the restaurants for a free lunch. It was pretty fun to see where Joseph spends his time all day.

And here's a picture of the kids running in a field. Actually, we were waiting for Joseph to get home here. I opened the car door and all four of them just shot out across the grass like they'd been tied down all day (or like maybe they'd been gorging on sugar all day... who knows?).

Once Joseph was home Emily was finally able to open the rest of her presents. She had been surprisingly patient about it all day. The other kids... not so much. They were so ready for her to get down to business!

She had quite the attentive and helpful audience throughout the process.

Grandma and Grandpa Bartlett gave Emily a lot of books. She's been happily devouring two or three a day.

Grandma Cooper sent a Rainbow loom with tons of rubber bands to get her going. This was a perfect gift for Emily! (One that I had actually been thinking about getting for her too!)

The other kids were clearly fascinated by it as well.

An ice cream cake (only slightly hideous) from Baskin Robbins because we don't quite have the equipment to make a cake in our kitchen right now.

7 candles! Big girl!

Mint chocolate chip ice cream with chocolate cake and enjoyed by all, as is evident by Joseph's face. And that, there on his wrist, is a very stylish Google watch. It basically looks someone taped a smartphone to his arm. But it's cool.

 And now, just because I found them while going through pictures, a few random things for posterity's sake:

Both boys are in heaven here. This is far-and-away Caleb's favorite thing to do - Minecraft in a joint game with Joseph. Especially since the upgrade, which added Endermen and slimeblobs and, I'm sure, many other wondrous things to the mobile game.

And Elinor. I took this picture mostly to make note of her awesome s'mores shirt and her incredibly fabulous Peggy Bundy pants. The whole outfit is just so... Elinor.