Hoda Kotb has all kinds of celebrations going on this week.
The 60-year-old is marking her last week as a co-anchor of the Today show after 17 years, and on Thursday, Jan. 9, the mom of two celebrated her eldest daughter Haley Joy’s 8th birthday with a bowling party.
“Bday girl!!!! Love you Haley❤️❤️,” the proud mom captioned an Instagram post featuring Haley and her friends at the bowling alley.
The little girl celebrated her milestone with a cookie cake, posing with her TV personality mom and snapping a group selfie with her friends and loved ones including her younger sister Hope Catherine, 5, and Kotb’s ex Joel Schiffman.
Kotb discussed some of the other ways she made Haley’s birthday special on the Jan. 9 episode of Today with Hoda & Jenna, sharing the surprise she had for her little girl at their home.
“Today also happens to be, which is really the big celebration, my daughter Haley’s birthday,” Kotb shared. “Valentine’s Day is the day that we got her. It’s like the ‘gotcha day,’ but her birthday birthday is today, and so we decorated the house and made a huge surprise first, so that when she woke up, she was like, ‘Woo, what’s going on here?’”
Kotb shared video of Haley’s surprise as she came down the stairs through a wall of streamers and into a massive balloon display. Haley then walked through a second set of streamers to find her living room covered in balloons.
“I taped up all this stuff, and literally, I did it last night,” Kotb shared. “In the morning, it all fell down.”
Kotb added that she and Haley shared a special moment the night before her big day.
“I hugged her last night and I said, ‘This is our last 7-year-old hug,’” Kotb recalled. “And then I go, ‘And tomorrow we’re going to have our very first 8-year-old hug.’ She goes, ‘My eighth year is going to be amazing.’ I go, ‘Yes. We’re going to do it together.’”
Co-host Jenna Bush Hager praised Kotb’s mom mode amid her own big celebration.
“You make the world so magical for your girls,” Bush Hager said. “They get to have you, and you make the world so magical. That looks like magic. And you did that, even though it’s your last week at the Today show, you’re running on fumes, everything is hard, you still made it magical for your [daughters].”
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Kotb’s final day on the Today show is Friday, Jan. 10.
“It’s really been a ride,” Kotb tells PEOPLE. “I keep getting lost in people’s eyes. That’s what I keep feeling when I see people, especially on the [Today] Plaza. They relay a story about something that happened or something they made.”
And Kotb is preserving many mementos from the week to share with her daughters one day.
“I asked our guys to roll up every sign that people made so I could take them home,” she says. “I want them in my house. They go, ‘We got you. We’re going to take them all home.’ One day my kids are going to unroll them and go, ‘What did you used to do?’ I’ll be like, ‘Look, it’s a long story,’ but I really want to hold onto things. I’m taking it. I’m wearing it, I’m drinking it, I’m eating it. I’m reading it. I mean, I can’t with the cards. The cards are my favorite part.”
The Today show airs weekdays on NBC beginning at 7 a.m. ET.
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