"I love Apricot" - Rhiannon's 5th birthday at Epcot.

The best part of Rhiannon's birthday was that she had no idea what was going to happen. For the last six months or so she had been telling everyone that they were going to be invited to her birthday party, so I had to break her heart by telling her that she wasn't actually going to have a party. I told her that mommy and daddy had a great surprise planned for her birthday, but that it wasn't a party so please stop inviting people. She was disappointed, but not too much because she still thought she was going to get a surprise party. Her birthday was on a school day and we let her believe that she was going to school like any other day.

When she woke up she found a giant treasure box on the kitchen table. She opened it to find her pretty, golden princess dress, gold shoes, her tiara, a princess necklace, a tinkerbell necklace, and various other items. Her eyes were huge when she say the dress and she fell in love with it immediately. She begged to wear it to school, so we told her that since it was her birthday it was okay. She got all dressed up and I fixed her tiara with some glitter hairspray and even let her wear some gold eyeshadow and sparkle lip gloss.

We told her that we had spent so much time getting her ready that she missed the bus, so we were going to drive her to school. She was disappointed because she loves riding the bus. It took her a while to notice that we weren't going the right way to get her to school and she said "Daddy, you missed your turn!" Joel said "Uh oh. Well, let's just see where this road goes." She didn't like that idea and the further we drove, the more upset she got.

Before she could cry - we weren't trying to make her miserable after all - we told her that since she missed breakfast, we thought we'd take her to have breakfast with the princesses at Disney World. Her mood turned around instantly. We had the best day. She was really treated like a princess by the cast members all day long. She got to meet all of the princesses except Cinderella and Moulan (and Alice, although she isn't really a princess). She was given a button proclaiming that it was her special day so all day long people passing us said "Happy Birthday Princess". She even got two tinkerbell pins from cast members working in the stores. She had an absolutely wonderful day - as did we - and I hope she always remembers this birthday.