Happy Birthday Lily

updated to add: Photos are now posted at flikr

---

Lily's birthday is not going as I planned it at all. Mandy's work schedule combined with the weather is making my life difficult. Instead of going out to ship island and swimming in the lovely clean water, we went to the beach near our house with the lovely dirty water. There is a 60% chance of rain today and when we went to the beach around noon it was cloudy and relatively cool, maybe mid 80's. We were the only folks at the beach, we had a blast. Mandy was at work but Jeff, Lily and I had fun.

We came home, had some lunch and we all took a long nap while it rained outside. I was able to bake a chocolate cake with pink strawberry frosting for Lily. It has no egg, flour, or corn. Did you know that powdered sugar contains corn starch, I had to figure out a way to make frosting without powdered sugar. Instead of looking for a recipe, I winged it. My concoction contains all kinds of things including strawberries for the pink. It tastes pretty good, not something I would bring to a bake-off but I think Lily will love it. So now I am waiting for Lily and Jeff to wake up so we can party.

Lily hopefully wont be disappointed that she doesn't get 100 presents and 100 balloons. Just to give you an idea of her lovely obsession with 100... she gives Daddy 100 kisses before bed, and then mommy gets 100 kisses, and then Mandy. Today she counted out 100 books for me to read to her. I only read 3 and by the third one I was paraphrasing a lot.

I cannot believe my little Lily is four. Today while taking a bath I noticed that she is just about as long as the bathtub. My little girl. My last baby. While Lily is growing and her life is evolving so is mine. I am slowly but surely gaining on my degree. I am in the near future going to be working outside the home again. It is exciting and scary. This mommy thing, I am good at, the working at my dream job, what if I am not good at it? Change is hard. I wish Lily would stop growing or Jeff would agree to have more babies. Not really, but kinda. I will try to remember to post pics of the cake and beach tomorrow.