Birthday party!

Rachel went to her friend Noah's birthday party yesterday (this is the Noah that she has been sighing about lately and wanting to marry). She said sadly tonight at dinner that she wished him a happy birthday but he didn't say thank you, so maybe that's it for the marrying thing. We did have a good time at the indoor playpark where it was held -- at one point they turned out the lights and turned on the colored disco-like lights, and Rachel was very poetic in her description of how they looked (unfortunately I didn't write it down in time).

Then we ended up having another movie and pizza night -- the movie Rachel chose was a second version of Cinderella in which the wicked stepmother, Lady Tremaine, ends up altering history with her magic wand so that the prince falls in love with Anastasia, Lady Tremaine's biological daughter, instead of Cinderella, and Cinderella has to undo the magic and reunite with the prince (with help from her mouse friends Jaq and Gus Gus). The movie was actually pretty engaging. Rachel has expressed and interest in watching Star Wars and Enchanted, and I can't wait to see those again, so movie nights are getting more and more entertaining at our house. If high-definition/big screen TVs get low enough in price, we may look later this year to replace our aging TV set. We'll see....

The best part of last night was watching Drew and Rachel dance to the music that played over the credits. Rachel also danced for a while last night while Drew did some cleanup work in the basement and I got rid of some junk mail. I cannot express how happy I get watching her dance (in the basement it was to the music of The Nutcracker). She has such a serious expression on her face, as if she's concentrating really hard to get the steps right, and when she danced with Drew, I tried to memorize every step she took so I could remember it on her wedding day, when she does a daddy/daughter dance and I'll have a vision of her as she was last night, dancing in her striped pony dress in our attic when she was a preschooler.

And then, of course, I'll start to cry.