Elsie’s Birthday!

Out of the frying pan and into the fire! That’s how I feel about January with all these birthdays piled up right after Christmas. Between Jonah’s family and my family and our own kids, there are only a few days in January without birthdays. I feel like I don’t get to properly celebrate everyone.

 

But man are we excited that Elsie turned FIVE this year!! Five years ago I was getting my pedicure and eating sushi, not realizing that my laziness in getting to the hospital meant that Elsie was going to be crowning in the car and born about 7 minutes after we screeched into the hospital parking lot. Her easy delivery was a prelude to her easy going attitude. And she is super cute. She talks, walks, and breathes cuteness. We all adore this girl.

All the crew was excited for the big day and all got up early so she could open her first present. It was from Ana; Ana had bought it two months ago at a garage sale and it had been patiently wrapped and waiting for the big day. It was a big bucket of Littlest Pet Shop toys. Yay. (I say that with the utmost sarcasm that because I’ve already stepped on them about twelve times. Elsie loves them though. So does Poem).

 

Po was very excited about all the present opening and bagels for breakfast and all the other festivities.

 

Elsie had a nice simple birthday. She went to Joy School then came home, had mac’n’cheese and chocolate milk, and watched the same Barbie movie two or three times in a row then had pasta for dinner and a chocolate cake with ice cream. It was her day, her way.

 

Here she is opening a cool art kit from Grammy and Grandfather.

 

Elsie was lucky because her birthday spanned two days—on Wednesday, she got to have her friend birthday party.

 

As much as I love parties and birthdays are the one day a year I love to completely indulge and spoil my kids, I get a little overwhelmed with throwing four kids’ birthday parties a year, so the kids get to choose every year—cool trip with hotel stay with the family, cool activity (like a waterpark or fancy dinner) with just parents, or a birthday party with friends with a very limited budget. Both Cam and Elsie chose parties this year, which is hilarious since we are basically camping out in a construction zone in a new town where they have hardly any friends. If it were me, I would choose the hotel. But, whatever. Their choice.

 

So Elsie decided on a RAINBOW BIRTHDAY PARTY and she made the cutest little invitations all by herself, complete with suggestions what each kid wear to the party (but Tai Tai decided to not dress up as a lightbulb). I found some great ideas on Pinterest for rainbow birthday party stuff, narrowed it down to the 2% of stuff I could actually pull off with my crafty handicaps, then narrowed that down to the 1% that we could actually do at the house in the state it’s in (i.e. bad oven, no kitchen, no room, piles of lumber everywhere). Ana and I stayed up late and decorated the one room in the house that isn’t cluttered and hoped to have the kids in there and out on the lawn. BUT, with perfect timing, the morning of the party was the day the plumbers and carpenter decided to finally show up to get going on their projects. Perfect. We (meaning Ana and I) quickly scrambled and hoped for the best.

Here we are making rainbow pasta necklaces on the 200 s.f. area of lawn that wasn’t taken over by contractors.  Thank goodness for Maui’s daily weather perfection.

 

 

It was followed by some impromptu games, like “duck duck goose”, “catch the ball with the towel”, and “toss the fallen Surinam cherries into the bucket”.

Then we went inside for some rainbow snacks…

 

 

…And to play “pin the tail on the rainbow appaloosa pony”….

 

Then the kids did a treasure hunt out in the yard.

 

 

And finally got to have some cake.

 

We love our Elsie!! Happy birthday wonderful girl.