Hoda Kotb has various kinds of celebrations happening this week.
The 60-year-old marks her last week as a co-host Today show after 17 years, and on Thursday, January 9, the mother of two celebrated her oldest daughter Haley Joy’s 8th birthday by going bowling.
“Bday girl!!!! I love you Haley❤️❤️,” the proud mom captioned an Instagram post showing Haley and her friends at a bowling alley.
The little girl celebrated her milestone with a cookie cake, posing with her TV personality mom and taking a group selfie with her friends and loved ones, including her younger sister Hope Catherine, 5, and Kotb’s ex Joel Schiffman.
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Hoda Kotb walks with daughters Haley and Hope.
Hoda Kotb/Instagram
Kotb discussed some of the other ways she made Haley’s birthday special on the Jan. 9 episode Today with Hoda and Jennasharing the surprise she gave her little girl at their home.
“Today is also, which is a really big celebration, my daughter Haley’s birthday,” Kotb said. “Valentine’s Day is the day we got her. It’s like a ‘gotcha day,’ but her birthday is today, so first we decorated the house and made a big surprise, so when she woke up, she was like, ‘Woo, what’s going on here?'”
Kotb shared a video of Haley’s surprise as she descended the stairs through a wall of tapes and into a massive balloon. Haley then went through another set of lanes to find her living room covered in balloons.
“I recorded all this stuff, and literally, I did it last night,” Kotb said. “Everything fell down in the morning.”
Kotb added that she and Haley shared a special moment the night before her big day.
“I hugged her last night and said, ‘This is our last 7-year hug,'” Kotb recalled. “And then I say, ‘And tomorrow we will have the first hug of an eight-year-old.’ She says: ‘My eighth year is going to be amazing.’ I say, ‘Yes. We’ll do it together.’”
Co-host Jenna Bush Hager praised Kotba’s mom ways amid her own big celebration.
“You make the world so magical for your girls,” Bush Hager said. “I can have you, and you make the world so magical. It looks like magic. And you did it, even though it’s your last week on the Today show, you’re worse, everything is hard, you still made it magical for your [daughters].”
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Kotb’s last day on Today the show is Friday, January 10.
“It’s been quite a ride,” Kotb tells PEOPLE. “I keep getting lost in people’s eyes. That’s what I always feel when I see people, especially on [Today] Square. They tell a story about something that happened or something they did.”
And Kotb keeps many memories from the week to share with her daughters one day.
Hoda Kotb introduces daughter Haley on the ‘Today’ show in 2017.
Nathan Congleton/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty
“I asked our guys to roll up every sign people made so I could take them home,” she says. “I want them in my house. They say: ‘We have you. We’ll take them all home.’ One day my children will unwrap them and ask, ‘What have you been doing?’ I’ll say, ‘Look, it’s a long story,’ but I really want to keep things. I’m taking it. I wear it, drink it, eat it. I’m reading it. I mean, I can’t with cards. The cards are my favorite part.”
The Today the show airs weekdays on NBC beginning at 7 a.m. ET.
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