Adele is 7!!!

Yesterday Adele turned 7. She has been looking forward to being "queen" for the day for weeks. She carefully outlined what she wanted to happen: breakfast in bed, when she comes upstairs there are balloons, the traditional treasure hunt for presents, everyone be nice to her all day, she has no jobs, everyone does what she says, horseback riding adventure, gelato in Italy at our favorite place, meatloaf for dinner follow by cake, dad reads Fancy Nancy (a book Bailey sent for Christmas), and I make up a long bedtime story before she falls to sleep. I would say we honored her birthday wishes to the T. Her last words before we turned off the lights were, "This was the best day in the whole world."

Adele's breakfast in bed included homemade icecream created and made by Tennie

Adele has a deep love for white boards so she received an easel for her birthday.

Here she is being a teacher to student Ceci, who is 13 months pregnant...

Adele's horseback riding Birthday Adventure was incredible. We found an American guy who has horses outside St. Agnes, the highest perched village in Europe. This little town is also voted (by somebody) as the most beautiful city in France. It is about a 30 minute drive up, up, up the mountain from our little villa. The views were spectacular! Then we went around a bend and there was St. Agnes, a little village with a castle on the cliff, built in the 800s!

We walked through skinny, well-maintained, cobbled streets and found a little rustic restaurant where we had lunch. It had views of the mountains, valleys and the sea, and was an experience in itself! We didn't have time to explore the whole village or visit the castle ruins on the cliff, and there is amazing history that we can't wait to delve into...we'll definitely go back.

We met up with the horse owner who saddled up three horses (Geoff and I led the horses) and pointed up to a mountain path and said, "Have a nice time." No guide? This man trusted his horses! We walked the girls up the road a ways and then off on to a little, rocky, dirt path that wound and narrowed and was sometimes snow-covered. The girls were naturals (although Ceci wanted to walk half the way), and after two hours of riding, feeling very cold, and our eyes dazzled from the views we took the horses back who got French baguettes as a treat! It was so fun and so memorable!

The hike wore Geoff out and I was up with Ceci off and on for 4 hours during the night so we were pretty pooped out at this point in the day! But the birthday girl's plan went on! We enjoyed our birthday tradition of getting gelato. Adele got two scoops. Making it through the rest of the night required pure willpower on the parent's part, but Adele was relishing her day and that made the day perfect.

Happy Birthday Adele!