Happy birthday, Sadie! Our "little" girl is 8 years old! Crazy to think that she was only 6.5 years old when we left NYC back in June 2019.
Sadie is a girl that LOVES her birthday. Last year we celebrated in Vietnam. This year, New Zealand! We're on a Summer road trip and when we were plotting out accommodations a month or two back, Doug & I were very intentional about where we'd be staying over Sadie's birthday. We wanted to make sure it was a special spot, worthy of celebrating our special girl's 8th birthday. Hold up. I'm getting ahead of myself!
Birthday Breakfast
We woke up near Tongariro and Doug whipped up a tasty batch of banana pancakes for the birthday girl. She happily shared some of the scraps with our resident pigs before we hit the road, as well as checked out some birthday ecards from US family.
Bonus video of the girls dancing & singing "Happy Birthday" to the cows :)
Glowworm Caves
As a birthday surprise we stopped off the Waitomo Glowworm caves, about the half way point on our drive to Raglan. Sadie & Doug had spotted some glowworms in the wild at our Abel Tasman bach over Christmas. Sadie was captivated by the unique creatures and we figured this stop at the caves would go over well. Full disclosure, when we pulled into the Waitomo Glowworm Caves car park, the girls (including Sadie) were less than thrilled. They were quite annoying, actually, in their completely unfounded complaining.
Our 1-hour tour took us down into a really impressive cave network discovered by the Maori in the late 1800s. We then popped onto a boat and drifted off in silence into dark caverns. It was then that we could see thousands and thousands of illuminated glowworms, like sparkling stars in the night sky. It was so cool! No pics allowed. Over the boat ride, Sadie whispered over to us no less than five times, "thank you, thank you, this is amazing!"
Birthday Treat
We arrived to our destination, Raglan, a surf spot along the East Coast. We milled around the town for a bit, checking out some of the cool surf shops. Sadie got some new sunnies and Paige got a new, super rad trucker hat. We also stopped for a birthday treat of real fruit ice cream, which made the birthday girl extra happy.
Solscape
Back to what I mentioned at the beginning, we found a really cool accommodation spot to ring in Sadie's birthday. We picked it thinking that Sadie would love its quirkiness and the tent sleeping, in particular. There are several unique sleeping options at Solscape, including train cabooses, Earth dome houses and tipis. We opted for a "bush belle" tent in the seculded tipi forest, which was a HUGE hit. Sadie was ecstatic.
While Doug whipped up a curry noodle dinner (requested by the birthday girl) on the relatively primitive shared kitchen facilities, I decorated our tent with birthday balloons and streamers. Sadie opened a few birthday gifts by the oven outside and "back home" in our tent, oozing appreciation for every celebratory moment and gesture.
Every time we'd make a big deal of it being her birthday, Sadie would counter with "it's not my birthday yet"! It wasn't until we reached the equivalent of 4:05pm USA time (10:05am the following day NZ time) that she grinned a massive grin and acknowledged was eight years old. Nothing like capitalizing on time zone differences to stretch out the birthday love :)
Birthday Reflection
Sadie has matured tremendously over the past year. Her inclination to notice & appreciate the smallest of details in our surroundings is amazing and infectious. She continues to give the most amazing hugs and show her affection unabashedly. She is getting more self assured in standing up for herself vs. her big sis in the normal sibling rivalry kind of way. Her creativity and artistic interests are thriving. And she continues to ooze sweetness, inquisitiveness and playfulness. We love you, Sadiebug!!
August 2021 update: Sadie was looking back at this post recently and asked why her birthday post didn't include a montage of annual birthday pictures like Paige's most recent birthday post did. I was speechless and had no choice but to create one! So here it is . . . the scrumpdiddly-umptious Sadie through the years on her birthday :) It's worth pointing out that Sadie's traditional birthday "cake" is waffles (featured in many of the pics below!). There's a reason . . . We were at our dear friends Mira, Tobias & Henry's place for brunch the morning Sadie was born (4 weeks before her due date). I started to feel contractions while we were there, so we headed home. My water ended up breaking on the few blocks walk home, and we called them back in a rush (they were already kindly on-board to take care of Paige whenever Sadie was born). We put Paige down for a nap & Tobias arrived minutes later. By the time Paige woke up from her afternoon nap, she was a big sister! :) So we joke that Mira's waffles are magical and helped welcome Sadie safely into the world :) It seems only fitting that we celebrate Sadie each year with festive waffles! Mira & Tobias were even kind enough to pass along to us their amazing old-school German waffle maker (used on Sadie's birth day) when they moved back to Germany a few years later. It's in storage at the moment, but we'll be busting it out for waffles in the years ahead, to be certain! We're so grateful for their friendship and support back in January 2013, and love that our friendship carries on strong, with a visit together early on in our travels in Austria, August 2019!
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