Happy Birthday Maggie

So her birthday was on February 8th but I haven't taken the chance until now to post anything about it. Her birthday falls exactly 3 weeks after Abigail's birthday and 1 week before Joseph's. So by mid-Feb I am all b-day'ed out and I need to get some distance I guess before I can approach writing about all of it. For Maggie's day of fun on Saturday (again, like Abigail, her birthday was on Sunday so we did the family fun activity the day before) we went to the only theme park in Singapore: "Escape Theme Park." It is no Disneyland. Just to give you an idea, it is only open on Saturday and Sunday and cost US $25 for our whole family (the family deal is 2 parents and 2 kids over 3 years old. They were a little confused when our family of 4 kids showed up and weren't sure what to do so they just let us all in for the "family deal" price. Not a lot of families here with 4 kids.) The sun was shining which in Singapore means it is hot, hot, hot. Cloud coverage is our salvation here. But the park was relatively empty and that was nice. The rides were a little like the country fair variety, but for 9, 7, and 3 years old they were exciting enough. There were about a dozen rides or so to choose from and they got to go on all of them multiple times. I sat out with Ella most of the time which was fine with me because the rides mostly were the dizzying going around in circles kind which give me a headache.

Sunday we did the make and decorate your own cake--Maggie's choice was chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. It is a good thing the girls have birthdays so close. They do everything together, even their birthdays. Maggie is a joy to have around because she is full of life and laughter. She has a loud giggle like laugh that starts small and grows until she fills the house with her laughter and even snorts. She is our child of extremes though, and can get angry, hurt or sad just as easily and just as loud. She works really hard in school and has surprised us at how sharp she is. She sails through her 1st grade math and loves to play math computer games, challenging herself by choosing the 3rd grade games with multiplication. She is also very conscientious and eager to get attention for her work. Sounds familiar. We love her a lot and are grateful to have enjoyed discovering her person over the the past 7 years. Although I must say, she has been a difficult nut to crack sometimes.

Sisters do make the best friends--at least in this case. I would say they are best friends 99.5% of the time.

This picture is a little silly, but it shows what an expressive girl she is. We pulled her out of class at school to go and see Abigail's assembly (the one I posted on Abigail's birthday blog entry) and you can see she was only a little bit excited.