Birthday Bear!

 

 

 

 

Sydney turned 4 in January. After four celebrations in one week (yes, she is terribly spoiled)I can say that I'm a bit wiser. We had a dinner and party on her actual birthday with Grandma and Grandpa Rieske, a lunch celebration at Chick-fil-a (since Daddy always takes her out for lunch on her birthday, but he was gone), a Build-a-Bear Party with her friends, and then a family party with our extended family to top it all off.

Lessons learned:

1. Decorating cakes with candy is way easier than actually trying to make things out of icing (especially with two little ones running around.) But, instead of a fight over who gets the flowers, balloons, etc. on the cake, it is a fight over the rock candy.

2. Cookie cakes are really quick, especially when you buy the buck of dough from Sam's.

3. Paying someone else to do the party is TOTALLY worth it. We had her party at Build-a-Bear and at a $10 minimum per guest, we told her she could only invite five friends (hey, we aren't made of money!) So, she decided to invite only girls, and chose Megan, Kate, Katelyn, Kaitlin, and Grace. What was I ever thinking inviting a million kids to parties in the first place? This was so much easier. (Oh, and she needs to find friends with different names!)

4. Cameras need batteries. Yep, I left mine plugged into the wall at home. Thankfully Amy bailed me out and ran home to get hers. I ended up with some amazing pics, so thanks Amy!

5. Don't put David in charge of taking the pictures. See the picture above of all of the kids around the flowers? Yes, that is the picture he took of the cake. Nice, huh? If you squint you can almost see it. I cropped the cake out of a corner of another picture, so you can kind of see it.

So here are the numbers:

4 celebrations
3 cakes
2 types of lasagna (for the family party)
1 ice cream treat from Chick-fil-a

= One happy four year old!