Poco Mountain Girl

Happy birthday to our baby girl–who somehow, someway, became a nine-year-old today.

We went to White Fence Farm in Lakewood for lunch. They have a home-style restaurant, gift shops, a little petting farm with goats, a playground, and a stagnant brown pond that sports a sign with something about “natural flow water.” 😉

The restaurant food was grandly overpriced, but kind of interesting–the grandpa at the table behind us ordered liver and onions–and the place was mostly patronized by the 70-and-over crowd.

Still, there were plenty of kids, and ours loved it. I’m glad they had the experience, because if it’s up to David and me, we just might never return, LOL. Or at least, not to the restaurant. The outdoors part was really pretty nice (aside from the stagnant pond), and they even had an “aviary” which consisted of a peacock and peahen. Peacocks are just awesome.

Our birthday girl’s day was punctuated by us checking on the fire in Nederland every so often. The wildfire has been raging since yesterday, and 600 acres are in flames. There is 0% containment, 2000 people have been evacuated, and homes have been licked up practically right where we lived less than three years ago. Here is the view of the smoke from our front deck in Black Hawk:

It has been so hot here–91 degrees in Black Hawk when we came home this evening, which is pretty abnormal. Also windy, which of course has contributed to the rapid spread of the wildfire.

We headed home after our shenanigans at White Fence Farm, and David and I set up Zia’s treasure hunt, which ended in a puppy pinata and presents in the goat shed.

She asked for mostly “homemade presents” and here are some things I made for her:

She’s into red foxes these days, so I sewed up these pillows for her new loft bedroom. (The moon chair was a present, too–but not homemade.) The “Happy Place” fabric was a standard pillowcase I got at Target and deconstructed, then added a fox print envelope backing. The others I made from scratch, using ideas I found online.

A set of hooks–this was quick since I bought the hooks already attached and just painted the animals and background color with acrylic paints. It was a last-minute gift–I wanted her to have a place to hang her growing collection of necklaces.

Speaking of necklaces…

I carved this wooden fox necklace for her from basswood.

And here’s another little carved fox, which turned out to be her very favorite present. 🙂

I painted both of these with my artist oil paints, since I liked those colors best. They took weeks to dry, ha. I’m glad I started them both in May.

Zia baked this decadent chocolate cake by herself, and I helped with the frosting and chocolate-covered strawberries. The whole thing was her idea, inspired by a chocolate-strawberry cupcake she found a picture of online. She also put in an order for root beer floats.

I tacked a strawberry cashew-cheesecake onto the mix–I made it early and saved it for my birthday, but I really wanted a piece tonight, so I had one (or two). When you’re almost 41 you can make executive decisions like that. Besides, it just doesn’t matter to me much if I serve my birthday cake with a missing piece.

Happy, happy birthday, baby girl. I can hardly believe you’re nine years old already! (It seems like it was just yesterday when I was nine, haha.) You’re growing so fast, and you’re so funny, smart and lovable. I miss those days when you were tiny and everyone said you were my little “mini-me.”  But I also love seeing you grow into your very own person–so different than me, so unique and original. I hope you have an awesome year (your tenth!) and I know it will fly. I’m trying to slow you down and keep you just slightly smallish, but it’s most definitely not working. So fly–and I’ll just try my best to keep up.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 10th, 2016 at 10:36 pm and is filed under Celebrating, Colorado, General, Little Redhead Girl, Making Stuff, Stitchin' Time. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.