'Faith, Hope, and Caroline'-- My 3 precious Muses: January in its succinct version

January has come and gone, and I can't get over how quickly it passed.

January will always be to me the month of my big girl's birthday. My Crannie is now a 7-year-old. A SEVEN year old. 7 sounds crazy to me. Of course, I do realize that I say this about every age.

Maddie had been wanting a "mustang" birthday party, as she just loves horses. She decided at the end of December that she wanted a Jessie the cowgirl birthday party (much to a certain sister's delight and envy... Faith now wants a Jessie party next year!), and so she had herself a Jessie party. On her actual birthday her sole request was "brownies, and that we are all together." My sweet girl.

January also kept us busy with our daily routine:

Dan and I had been wanting to get the girlies to the zoo for awhile now. We used to take Maddie and Faith to the Philly zoo in the winters when they offered the "pay the weather" admission, but they don't seem to offer that anymore. We were excited though when we saw that Zoo America was having free admission on a weekend that we had promised the girlies a trip to Chocolate World in Hershey anyway. So, we made a day of it and visited the zoo before heading over to Chocolate World. It had snowed the day before, and so the animals were just loving the weather and were much more active than usual. I loved that part. And, our girlfriends loved seeing the animals fooling around too;) We also got to see a barn owl up close and personal when a zoo official brought him over to us. That was pretty cool.

And, of course we just love Chocolate World. We rode the ride 3 times, and Abrie, Faith, and I rode it a 4th time while Dan and Maddie went to get a slushie. Abrie and Faith probably would have gotten back on another 10 more times. They call it the "Its a Small World ride of Pennsylvania!" Girlies did the free Factory experience too, and loved it.

We've been using our library pass for the historical society a lot this month too. We went together one day last week, and then Dan took them on a Saturday that I had to work. They just love the children's area at the historical society:

This past weekend we visited with beloved cousins to celebrate Uncle Nate's 32nd birthday. We had a blast! Girlies thought it was the coolest thing to see Uncle Nate having a birthday party because they always ask why we don't have birthday parties. Faith is always talking about how she wants to throw us parties;) We went for a hike at the bird sanctuary, which is a favorite place of ours to go, and Aunt Lisi and Uncle Nate organized a fun scavenger hunt for clues to get to the pirate pinata.