Happy Birthday Caroline!!!

Today is a very big day...today Caroline continues to prove all the "experts" wrong by celebrating yet another birthday. Today, Caroline is FIVE!

I have told some of Caroline's story before. She was diagnosed in utero with a rare chromosome disorder. We were told she wouldn't survive birth. It would be a miracle if she did. However, if that miracle did occur, she would not survive her first year. She would be a vegetable. She would never walk, talk, smile, know who we are.

Well, they were right about some. She doesn't walk or talk. But they were wrong about a lot. She is very animated. She definitely knows exactly who we are. Even though she probably will not be mobile, she is very good at using her hands and we hope that maybe someday, she will be able to, at least partially, control a wheelchair on her own. Maybe to just turn herself around, maybe to move closer to someone she wants to be near. She has defied the experts time and time again, her possibilities are endless.

Caroline was SO cute as a tiny baby! We would take pictures and put this tiny bear next to her so we could compare her size. Christina was so excited about her little sister who she named "baby sister" or actually "baby sitter". The name stuck and we still refer to her as Baby Sister. To Kallie, she is just "sister".


But now, 5 years later, we marvel at how big she is and how far she has come! She is long and lanky and doing just fine.

As you know, Caroline got a pool from Make a Wish. We still have to get the deck on (the pool people gave us a check and we are going to do it ourselves), but we can still swim in it.

And yesterday, Caroline finally got to try out her pool! She absolutely LOVED it. She sat in a float and kicked and splashed and smiled and laughed. She literally had the time of her life. And she literally stayed in the pool for TWO hours. I kept checking to see if she was cold, but she was just fine.





She loved discovering that she could splash the water with her hands!



And I think just the feeling of floating around was relaxing.


And, of course, she just loved being in the center of her sisters' crazy fun!

Christina spent about 95% of her time underwater.



And Kallie just enjoyed floating around and occasionally fighting with her big sister.



But all in all, it was a wonderful afternoon. And we are thinking that this Wish was the absolute best gift for Caroline EVER.