celebrations

We'll see if I can condense the last five days into one blog post. It's been eventful.

Thursday

Daddy took the day off to enjoy Rachel's birthday with us. We started the day with a present. She chose the big one in the stack, which was five presents all wrapped together--five of these princess sets, kind of like Polly Pockets.

Oh. my. goodness. She was in princess heaven. We wouldn't have had to give her anything else. She would've been completely satisfied with these. And now there are teeny tiny little pieces of things laying all over the place (and some are already lost). And she cant get the clothes on and off herself, which means I have to do it. I'm rethinking this whole idea, but she loves them.

Next we had birthday donuts for breakfast. Rachel was thrilled. She picked off some sprinkles, then licked as much chocolate off the top as possible. She didn't take more than one bite of the donut. She just wanted the chocolate. Healthy start, huh? Oh well, her birthday only comes once a year!

Then we were off to the zoo. Without going into details about her behavior, it wasn't the best visit we've ever had, but it was a nice day, and she had a good time for the most part. It was just fun to spend the morning together. This is waiting to see the baby elephant, who was two weeks old.

After she woke up from her nap we gave her her next present:

We gave her a choice about where we should go to eat dinner. She chose pancakes, so we went to Bob Evans. She ordered her own dinner off the kids menu and ate all five of the little pancakes on her plate! We couldn't believe it. I guess she really DID want pancakes!

We came home and had ice cream and cake. She loved having us sing to her. I made her a little cake just for that day. The big cake was coming at the party. What a sugar high--five pancakes, cake, and ice cream....

She opened the rest of her presents--mostly dress up clothes of some sort.

It was a fun day to celebrate our sweet girl.

Friday

I started in bright and early at 7:30 AM on her castle cake for her party by baking the cakes, and then started in on the decorating.

What I thought would take me most of the morning ended up taking me until 3:00 PM! It was a long, tiring day of leaning over that silly cake. Over and over again I asked myself, "Why am I doing this???" But Rachel had known for weeks that she was having a castle cake and was so excited about it, so I couldn't change my mind.

I ran into some problems because my cake base wasn't as wide as the instructions said to make it. That meant some of the parts didn't fit where they were supposed to. My husband came to the rescue and cut some wood for me to fit under the front section

Finally I finished. I was pretty pleased with the results. But I'll never do it again! Then I had to worry that it wouldn't topple over before the party! It wasn't super sturdy.

The rest of the day we had to get the house ready for the party. I was already exhausted.

Saturday

We went up bright and early to my brother's house (they live an hour north of us) for their neighborhood's easter egg hunt. It was a cold but sunny morning. (That's the man that runs it, dressed in a pink bunny costume).Rachel didn't quite get it, and walked around looking at all of the eggs instead of picking them up and collecting them in her bucket, but she did collect some things and enjoyed herself. Mostly I think she liked playing with her cousin's toys after we went in to get warm at their house!

We came back home for lunch and a nap before the big birthday party. Family came and we got her up from her nap and the fun began.

We started the party with presents. We had saved some presents to give her at her party, and everyone else brought presents, too. She got so excited about every single thing....even when she'd open the present and it was an unmarked box she'd say, "Look! It's a BOX!" like it was the most exciting thing ever!

Then came cake and ice cream. The cake hadn't toppled, so I was happy about that.

I was so sad to take apart my hours of hard work, but everyone enjoyed the cake.

After that we headed outside. Rachel and her cousins had a blast. Rachel just loves being around people, especially people she adores as much as her family, so she was in heaven.

We ordered pizza for dinner (much, much easier than my cooking some elaborate dinner, which I've done in the past) and the kids played outside some more after that. Uncle Jack (my brother) arrived (he lives in NYC but was home for the home opener baseball game for his favorite team) and everyone was excited to see him. Rachel got to stay up extra late and play with some of her new toys (oh my, does she have some new toys.....just as many as if it was Christmas). It was a long, tiring, but fun day.

Sunday

Easter kind of got lost in the shuffle this year. I guess that's what happens when a birthday is so close to a holiday--either the birthday or the holiday gets slighted. This time it was the holiday. But we tried. Rachel was excited to find her Easter basket, which the Easter bunny had hidden in her new birthday princess tent.

She was thrilled to get dressed up. Not so thrilled to pose for the camera, however. The last few are the best ones we got, and they aren't that great of either of us.

She had fun at Sunday School but was excited to get home and play with her new toys some more.

My mom cooked us a delicious Easter dinner--it was so nice to finally not have fifty million things on my mind and not have to worry about it, and just enjoy it.

After Rachel went to bed my family left. I was sad the weekend was over, but also ready to get back to normal and rest. My mind has been working a mile a minute for weeks over all of this. I'm glad it all went well and our girl seemed to enjoy every single minute of it, which makes it all worth it.