Emily's 5th Birthday.

Today was a big day for Miss Emily.

It was her birthday.

For a week now she's been on the countdown.

Every morning for the past 13 days she been quick to tell EVERYONE how many days were left till her birthday. And then today finally arrived. She came walking down the stairs this morning and when she saw me this is what she said, "You know mom, TODAY is my birthday!"

Yes siree it is! We ventured away from our breakfast tradition of stacking pancakes on top of each other in the amount of how old they are. With Kory's work schedule being changed from 6pm to 6am for the time being this little girl had to go to the sitters yesterday because I had to work to. This means I had to wake her up at 6am. She then got to bed at 9 last night (an hour past her bed time). She didn't wake up till 10:00am this morning. Breakfast was long gone for everyone else and she wanted a scone. So being her birthday I caved instead of forcing cold cereal and stuffed her scone (frozen dough roll out of the freezer) with birthday candles instead. She was then lucky to recieve a solo of "Happy Birthday" given by me since the older kids were at school, Kory was sleeping and Brayden just kept saying Happy Biday over and over and over.For a few weeks now she been practicing her balancing skills on an old bike that we gave to Hunter when he turned 5. We took the pedals off of it for her to learn how to do this. A few weeks later she thinks she can balance well enough that she wanted the pedals put back on. Knowing I bought this bike several weeks ago off of craigslist Kory's been telling her he'd put them back on for her birthday.
Along with the daily birthday reminder we've been having we've also had a pedal reminder too. When Kory got up this afternoon Emily's first comment to him was that today was her birthday and he promised he'd put the pedals on the bike. So... can you go do that NOW! Kory told her he would but she needed to go put her shoes on first. While she was upstairs Kory brought the suprise inside. To say she was excited about this new purple, frilly girls bike was an uderstatement. I could hardly get her to stand still long enough for a picure. She kept hopping up and down with excitement.

The bike she's been balancing on is a 10" and this is a 12". OOPS! I did not realize that. She can balance on it but can't quite keep her balance and push the pedals at the same time. I'm sure with some practice she'll get use to the bigger bike. She loves it!

Emily's requested birthday cake this year was LPS (Littlest Pet Shop).

I cheated with this cake and put her little figurines on top of the cake instead of making them out of fondant. I love playing with fondant. I love the sleek, clean look that fondant gives. However, I do not like the taste along with most everyone else. A few weeks ago I made a Madagascar cake that was all fondant. Most everyone scraped the fondant off and ate the cake with what little frosting there was in between. Knowing that no one really likes fondant I decided to make Emily's cake out of my cream cheese frosting that everyone likes so much. A few days ago I did make the decor (flowers, reeds, paw prints and mini cake) out of fondant just so I wouldn't have to take the time to do it today with regular frosting. Fondant can be easier in some ways like that.

Being Emily turned "5" our tradition is that this is her 1st "Friend Birthday Party" this year. We invited all the 4-5 year olds in town to this big event. Six out of the seven came tonight.

Our first activity was to decorate a home for the LPS that each girl would be adopting later in the night.

When our boxes were done we played Musical Paw Prints.

Madelyn was in charge of the music.

Our next game was "Animal Trainer Says". You probably know this game as Simon says...

stick out your tongue.

After a few more silly games it was present time.

I hate going to birthday parties that all the kids crowd around the birthday person pushing their gift into their face and yelling open mine, open mine. The birthday kid is so busy taking gifts that the opened gift is barely looked at before the next is shoved into their hand. The birthday kid can hardly breathe a thankyou to the gift giver amidst all the chaos and confusion around him. At the same time Mom can't get any decent "opening gift" pictures. It also makes it harder on mom to know who gave what for future thank you cards and most of the time the birthday kid has no idea who gave what. It also seems that when a group of kids get around the birthday child too much help is often given in the opening of the present department. Sooooo I took something I saw a friend do many years ago and applied it once again to this party. That is instead of having one chair in front of everyone for the birthday child to sit on and open their gifts I put out 2.
I had all the guests grab their gifts and sit on the couch. Then one at a time they were all given the opportunity to sit next to Emily while she opened their gift in front of them and everyone else.

This gives me plenty of opportunity to take pictures of Emily with all of her friends. This weekend when she and I sit down to write her thankyou notes we now have a great reminder of who gave what to make the notes more personable.

Emily is very excited to have her very own apron like mom and big sis.

Thankyou cousin Rachel.

I had to include this picture because I think it's HILARIOUS! Cousin Sara thought Emily would enjoy a bag full of goodies. The new pony her mom bought for Emily wasn't good enough for her. She included two old shirts that didn't fit her anymore but thought Emily might like. A pair of well worn sunday shoes that are to small for her and the best of all an extra used toothbrush she doesn't use any more. Thankyou Sara!

After presents came the adoption time.

Each house the girls decorated earlier had a tag tied to it. There was a matching tag tied to a LPS on a different table. Each girl got to match there tag for their new best friend to take home. Along with their new friend came an adoption certificate and a bottle of bubbles to take home.

LPS's can be expensive. I was able to win a lot on Ebay a few weeks ago that ended up costing me $.75 a piece. That includes my charged shipping fee too. The boxes I got at Dollar Tree a pack of 3 for $1. The bubbles I also picked up at Dollar Tree. They are the wedding bubbles you see all the time. They came in a package of 9 for a $1. I wrapped them in a piece of scrapbook paper and put a LPS sticker on it. The LPS stickers I paid almost $3 for one package of 30 stickers. Good grief!I only paid it cause I was next to Target and didn't have the time to drive to Wal-Mart where I know they had a package for $1.50. It makes me feel better to think it would have cost more than that in gas to go to Wal Mart and my time is worth more too, right???? Total cost on goodie boxes was $13 for 9 girls. I spent $1.45 for each girl and it's something that will actually be played with and not thrown away the first time their mom has to pick it up off the floor. Or am I the only mom that throws the cheap, crappy made, going to break the 1st time it's played with plastic toy I find on the floor after my child has come home from a birthday party?

After our adoption center was complete we served cake and ice cream.

She made out with quite the loot this year.

Happy Birthday Emily!

I hope your day was a special one.