"Exactly What I Wanted"

Monday night at the end of Evie's birthday, as she was getting into bed, without prompting, she smiled and gently said "Thank you for my birthday -- everything was exactly what I wanted."  It was so perfect and satisfying to hear her say that.

Rewind 18 hours.  I drove to Cub after midnight to get a balloon, ice cream, and a box of Lucky Charms for her (she wanted her own box, and it's once a year so why not).  I stayed up another couple hours fixing up her "new" bike.  I yanked and tugged and pulled the old tubes and worn out white tires off the green and white and purple bike, and replaced them with the not-as-old tubes from the red bike and the brand new white tires I bought.  It looked like a regular bike shop in our living room, with parts and tools and two undone bikes scattered around.  I wiped down the frame, pushed the white tassles into each handle grip, fastened the basket to the front, and stood it next to the kitchen table.

Mirjam had already arranged the other presents on the table.  Around 7 a.m., Mirjam woke Evie and William up, covered her eyes before she saw everything, then woke me up.  We went together to the kitchen table (Mirjam's hand still over Evie's eyes), and then came the big reveal.  Mirjam and William sang happy birthday (I kind of hummed along, still half-asleep.)  Evie stood there beaming before she started opening the gift bags and wrapped packages.

She got a new light blue swimsuit with little white flowers (which she loved and tried on right away), a new pink nightdress (which she loved and wore to bed that night), a pink piggy bank with (when she opened it, she said with excitement, "It has a tutuuu?!" touching the frill on its back and the tiara on its head), new stencil books from Oma und Opa in Germany, money for the piggy bank and a towel from Gma and Gpa in Utah, the bike, the Lucky Charms, and other stuff I can't remember.

That night for dinner, Evie chose the restaurant -- she wanted to go to Burger King with the play place.  Sounded fine to me.  We got kids meals for William and Evie (and she got to have Sprite!), chicken for Johanna, and a Whopper Jr. for me.  They climbed up and down, played with their kids-meal toys, and we went home and had Sprite floats with the ice cream I bought late the night before.

It wasn't overwhelming or overdone, it wasn't a ton of junk, it was just perfect.  Nice and simple and our family together.  And as Evie said, everything was exactly what she wanted.