How quick was that?

It does not seem like a year since I was busy preparing for a certain little girl's birthday celebrations, yet here we are again (for the fourth time!) most joyfully in the throes of birthday plotting - cake making, present wrapping, party planning and working out ways to fill our beautiful girl with glee over the next few days. Her  birthday is on Monday when we are having a family day, doing her favourite things (jumping on a bouncy castle, going to the park, lunch out and then a tea party at home with all her favourite grown-up's.)

But tomorrow we are having a gathering of all the favourite little people - 7 girls and  a special brother. Butterflies and fairy princesses win the day again. We will be making butterfly placemats, Magic Daddy is going to show up with his bag of tricks and the ever popular face paints may get a use too (we will have lots of little butterflies by the end I am sure).

It feels like such a ritual now, staying up late making the birthday cake. I love it. I use Nigella Lawson's Buttermilk Birthday Cake recipe and every year I go OTT with the edible glitter. Its fantastic stuff - shiny, shiny, shiny.

It is such a ponderous time, the eve of the birth of my children. My mind always goes back : "this time four years ago, x was happening" (the whole process with Isabella took oh so long, so the remembering starts two days in advance!). I have never felt so alive as the moments when my children were born - it is precious to remember and I am just so very grateful for the gift of this beautiful girl. Yesterday morning she woke up,  came into our bedroom and said, "Mummy, I dreamt of stars and snowflakes and flowers!". How gorgeous is that? As for me,  I am off to bed to dream of glittery butterflies.