Thursday, November 18, 2010

Six years old!

WARNING: LONG POST AHEAD!!!
We have been busy bees around here celebrating Amelia's 6th birthday! Her birthday was Monday but we had birthday activities on three consecutive days (lucky girl). Here's what we did.

Sunday: Party with Amelia's friends at Jungle Java (an indoor playplace). She had 6 friends and their siblings there, plus the four of us, and all the kids' parents, which made for a full room! The kids had a great time playing, which meant I got to visit with the parents. Fun! For her cake, Amelia requested chocolate with strawberry frosting, which turned out to be very tasty. I found a recipe for strawberry buttercream on Martha Stewart's site which was divine! Amelia is really in to dogs and puppies these days, so that was the theme of her cake. We had Fletcher (our beagle) on top, Rosie (her build-a-bear dog, which looks like a bear) in the middle, and Beautiful (one of her Webkinz) on the bottom. I had a battle with the fondant and it ended up looking pretty horrendous, so I decided to put pawprints all over the cake to hide the mistakes. Thankfully, it worked! Here are a few pictures from the party.
We didn't open presents at the party (too much craziness!), so we packed them up and got in the car. By the time the party was over, it was 5:30, and our church Life Group had started at 5. Bryan said, "well I guess we're not going to Life Group, right? " I said, "I'd kind of like to go..." and Bryan replied, "Me too." Then Amelia piped up from the back seat: "I want to go to Life Group. I want to see my friends!" Bryan and I were both shocked and so happy that she would leave a big box full of un-opened presents in favor of spending time with her church friends! YAY!! Of course then Andrew (the little parrot) said "I go to small groot!!!" :-) After Life Group we went home, opened presents quickly and went to bed. Bryan had a conference to attend the next day, so he left for the airport late Sunday night.

Monday: Amelia's birthday! She got ready for school and was allowed to play with one toy when she was done, before we had to leave for the bus. She picked a Littlest Pet Shop toy, and walked around with it all morning saying things like "Mom. This is SO adorable. I didn't even see it had binoculars (it's a safari set)." and "Mom. This is SO adorable. I almost cried when I saw it, I was so happy. Like, I had tears in my eyes." Dramatic much, are we??? :-)

Anyway, Amelia went to school and I took Andrew to school, where he got to stay all day (he did really well)! Then I got a treat ready to take to school for Amelia's class: Cake balls (aka cake bites or cake truffles). If you've not heard of them, you MUST try them. Go to this link (Bakerella) and check out the cake bites and cake pops. They are delicious and so cute! Anyway, I worked on those with the help of a friend whose daughter is in Amelia's class and shares her birthday. The cake bites turned out really good and the kids loved them! After the school snack I took Amelia to the doctor for her yearly checkup (she's healthy and doing great). Then we picked up the things for her birthday dinner (she requested fish sticks, rice and peas, ha!) and picked up Andrew from school. It was a good birthday! Here is Amelia enjoying her birthday dinner and the present we gave her (a big box of Legos).
Tuesday: Pretty much a normal day! We had our last leg of birthday celebrating that night (since Bryan was out of town Monday and wouldn't be back until Tues. afternoon). We did our traditional birthday dinner at Red Robin with our close friends...16 of us in all! We had a great time eating, visiting, and eating more cake bites that I brought. They were a big hit again! In fact, we gave some to our waiters and they were spell-bound! So much so that we gave some to other staff at the restaurant and they were all coming over asking about them. It was hilarious to see what an effect those things had! We all got a good laugh over that. Here are some pictures from dinner.
So, as you can see, we've had a full last few days. Now, on to Thanksgiving! Have a happy week!