seven

Yesterday, Clara officially turned SEVEN!!! I can hardly believe it.

We took the day off to celebrate her big day.

Here, she is on our way to the L stop....
It amuses me that she worked on her outfit the night before... choosing the perfect tights and shirt... but when we went out the door, she threw Alex's old hoodie on as her jacket.

Our first stop was the L station to get her fare card. In Chicago, kids ride free until age 7... then they can get a reduced fare card. You don't get them out of the machines, you have to ask the attendant for one. Clara has been coveting Alex's fare card for a while now. Yesterday she walked up to the attendant, told her that today was her 7th birthday and may she please have a fare card! The CTA attendant was fabulous... making a big deal about and wishing her a very Happy Birthday. The Red Eye guy and several CTA patrons wished her Happy Birthday as she went to the kiosk to add fare money to her new card.

She's a card carrying seven year old now...(who was annoyed with me for wanting a photo)

We left the L station to get on the bus to Michigan Avenue.

I think this was her doll Kit's first bus ride...
Soon we were at the brand new American Girl Place at Water Tower. We had been peeking into the windows for a while now, but we had waited until her birthday to actually go in.

We started with lunch in the cafe...
They brought her a cake with a candle and sang Happy Birthday...
After lunch we shopped since she had birthday money to spend and while we shopped, Kit got her hair done at the salon...After the American Girl store, we stopped in the Lush store inside Macy's for Clara to pick out a special birthday bath bomb. She was wearing her birthday sticker from the AG store so they made a big deal out of her birthday there too (we're there entirely too often). They let her pick her favorite bath bomb and do the demo. They called everyone in the store around and told them that Birthday Girl, Clara, would be demoing her favorite bath bomb today!

She was quite the celebrity!

We finally hopped in a cab home, exhausted from our shopping. But before we could get too comfortable, we had to take the dog to the vet. She has an ear infection, that we knew. What we didn't expect was for them to find a heart murmur. They're not too concerned at the moment. We go back for her check-up in January so they'll see what's going on then. The vet was very sweet and let Clara listen to Friday's heart (Clara claims that she wants to be a vet someday).

Then, we were finally home for good and Clara could play with her new purchase.

Kit's best friend, Ruthie...

Okay... time to run to violin!