Elle turns Eleven!!!!!

How does this happen?! How is my little baby girl 11 years old? Ugh it makes me so so sad and honestly a little scared at the same time. I only have like 8 more years with her in my home. Have I taught her enough? Played with her enough? Talked wit her enough? I feel so inadequate to be her Mother. I'm trying though. And I'll continue to try. I love her so much. We had so much fun celebrating her. Although the first part of our "celebrating" did NOT turn out how we had hoped. Elle really wanted to take her friend Gabby to the Tulip Festival. It's such a gorgeous place and we enjoyed it so much the year before. So my mom and I, Jamie and Kellen, and the kids and Elle and Gabby all loaded up and headed to Thanksgiving point. We hadn't been out of the walk longer than a few moments when it started to rain. It was coming down pretty hard so we turned around and went back. We were hoping to wait it out. It stopped, the sun came out, so we headed back out on our walk. We got quite far out by the food trucks when it honestly started to pour harder than I had seen in FOREVER. I was so worried about keeping Kemp from getting too wet and with it coming down as hard as it was we were getting soaked. I ran to this little over hang where they sell food and waited there praying it would pass again. After about ten minutes it let up a bit. At that point we probably should have headed back to the car. It would have been a long walk and we hadn't gotten to see all of the best features we were planning on. So we kept on…we headed towards Elle's favorite "secret garden." Oh. My. Word. I haven't never been in quite  a storm in all my life. While we were there in this little enclosed tunnel made of bent trees it started to hail like I've never seen. It was INSANE!!! Everyone was getting soaked. I DIDN'T know what to do. I wanted to CRY. I was SO worried about Kemp and Tate was bawling. I didn't know how to get them back to the car. We were for sure about a mile away. We just sat there and sat there but the water was soaking through and we knew it wasn't going to let up. I ended up calling Toby and begging him for his help. He came to the rescue. I was running with the stroller through puddles and was trying to keep Tate from bawling…it was awful. Writing about it doesn't do it justice. But Elle and Gabby thought it was fun. Toby met me half way (by divine intervention I'm sure he was in the right place and the right time and able to get to me quickly.) What an adventure. Not exactly the day we were hoping for. - Her party was so much fun. It was a "Elle's Favorite Things" party. We did all of her favorite things, art, crafts, games, and food and topped it off with a pig cake since at this moment in time she is obsessed with pigs. I was so excited for the gift we got her.  We bought her a guitar! She recently has discovered she loves singing and she is quite good at it. So we figured a guitar and (we also got her a Ukalele,)  would be the perfect instrument for her to learn and sing a long to. So she's starting lessons next week. She was so excited. It was a great birthday and a great way to celebrate our ELLE!!!