Yesterday we celebrated Cate's 4th birthday. Her actual birthday is tomorrow, but we had her friends join us for a gathering at the Secret Stables to celebrate yesterday.

We had amazing cooperation from Mother Nature. You never know what you might get weather-wise this time of year in Alaska -- anything from sun to rain to wind or snow. We got sun. A beautiful, sunny, fairly warm Fall afternoon. Secret Stables is a little horse farm in town and they have a lovely set up for kids to run around and play, enjoy the farm animals, go on pony cart rides, and explore through the corn maze. It's all very down-home -- just a nice space to allow kids to be kids. And a fabulous place to be on a nice day. They also have a heated barn, complete with haystacks for kids to sit and eat their cake and ice cream and open presents.

We were blessed to have so many of Cate's favorite people there. She had Grace, the neighbor girl who dotes on her, Abigail and Kaes VanDoorne, Ava and Evan Liles, Evan, Ellianna, and Elijah Loudon, Carter Burson, Grandma and Grandpa, and Tony, Callahan and Quinn Fedullo.

It's quite wonderful to see Cate when she is so joyful. She's easily pleased, but yesterday she was as joyful as could be. She was full of giant smiles and her body language was great to see -- holding hands with friends, jumping and skipping through the open farm spaces....all around she was thrilled with her party.

Last night we went out to dinner at Red Robin with our friends who were visiting from Fairbanks. The waitress caught whiff of Cate's birthday and came to do the birthday song. She buried her shy little head in my shoulder as they sang and clapped -- then dug happily into the free ice cream sundae. A happy day, indeed.