Eight!

Natalie turned the milestone age of eight years old on Friday.  Her birthday was on the first day of summer break this year.  The night before, she was already on the countdown of how many hours were left until we would wake her up singing "Happy Birthday."  On her birthday, we "woke" her up at 6:30 to sing and give her presents.  I asked her later what time she actually woke up.  She sheepishly told me she had been awake since 5:00 and she couldn't help it, and she had been trying to wait patiently for us to come in.

Natalie's birthday was dominated by a specific theme.  My Little Pony, My Little Pony, and more My Little Pony.  There is a new 4th (I think) generation of these ponies.  They look totally different and are geared more towards Natalie's age group than for preschoolers like the ones before. 

Natalie was very excited by the presents she got from her grandparents.  She had been waiting for these particular items for quite some time.

G-ma and G-pa Burgess gave her Princess Cadence and Shining Armor with their wedding castle playset.

G-ma and G-pa Webb gave her a set of four ponies:  Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle, and their teacher, Miss Cheerilee.  All of these ponies she got from her grandparents she previously had made paper versions of them to play with.

She also got the long awaited Nightmare Moon.  And some more random extras.

She also got a MLP play tent, a Twilight Sparkle chapter book, a CTR ring, and new scriptures.  She was surprised to find her name printed on the scriptures and wondered how we did it.  In hindsight, we probably should have saved the ring and scriptures for a week and given them to her on her baptism day.  They were a bit overshadowed by the excitement of all the new ponies.  She is a little more than obsessed right now...

Playing in her room with all her new (along with the old) toys.  You can also see her new bed.

Natalie spent most of the day playing with her new ponies.  She requested pancakes for breakfast and mac and cheese for lunch.  She also got a large bowl of cottage cheese with her lunch.  She loves cottage cheese and rarely gets it because it's a bit expensive for a snack on a regular basis.  For dinner we all went to Olive Garden.  I also painted her fingernails and toenails with my nice nail polish.

I used a little bit of the batter from her cake to make a few cupcakes so she could have some cake on her actual birthday.  We sang "Happy Birthday" and had cupcakes when we got home from Olive Garden. 

I had to take a picture of Natalie after she fell asleep with all of her ponies lined up in her bed.  I think she said her new birthday ponies took her up to a grand total of 21 of the "normal sized" ponies.  I think she now has just about every one available for purchase at the moment.

On to the birthday party... We had her party the day after her birthday, on Saturday, so that Nate could be here to help out.  Sadly, he got a migraine and wasn't able to do much.  But it ended up being okay because less than half of the girls we invited were able to come--only three to be exact.  Natalie was a bit disappointed, but she was okay.  I think she was mostly sad because her best friend from school didn't come. 

Okay, time out for a second so I can rant a little.  (Skip this paragraph if you don't want to hear it.)  This party made me come to a few realizations.  #1--I kind of want to be done with birthday parties in general.  They are definitely a labor of love for my kids, and I guess that's why I keep doing them.  #2-- We are no longer inviting kids from school or kids from the neighborhood, no matter how much my kids beg.  They never come.  And I have to buy supplies and do all the prep work because they might show up...  The kids from church are the only ones who ever come.  They will now be the only ones invited.  Which leads to... #3-- When there is a lot of prep work involved, I am super limiting the number of kids and will check beforehand to make sure that those kids can come before I do all the prep work.  #4--From this time forth, I will always RSVP to other parties whether we are coming or not.  I guess overall, I just spent too much time on this party, which is my own fault.  So I kind of shared Natalie's disappointment at only having three (there were actually only 2 for the first 45 minutes) kids show up.  But again, my fault--I should have done more checking with people.  Now, all of that said and done... it was actually pretty nice and calm to only have three guests.  :)  Okay, the end.

Each girl got to paint their own ceramic figure.  Natalie had a pony, two girls had princesses and the last girl had a castle.  The girls loved this and spent a lot of time painting their ceramics.  Around the table starting at the front left are: Elnorra Shaffer, Lila Parry, Natalie, Damon, and Story Sanders.

I made pizza dough, and before the painting started, each girl got a ball of dough to make their own pizza.  They painted their ceramics while the pizzas were cooking.  Here they are eating their creations.

 

 

I made each girl a tote bag to take their stuff home in.  Originally, I was going to do this as part of the party activities.  The picture is actually one of those plastic party goodie bags.  There is a method of ironing plastic onto fabric so that it ends up looking like screen printing.  So I was going to let the girls iron the plastic onto the bags.  But to make a long story short, my sample bag proved the process wasn't going to work at the party and needed to be done in advance.  So, something that I intended to be fun and simple ended up being a LOT of work for me.  And I had to make 8 bags so that I would have one for each girl that might be coming.  But, the bags turned out really cute and I think the girls really liked them.  And each bag only cost me about $0.75 to make--well, as long as you don't figure in that whole "time is money" thing.



Ahh, the cake.  All things considered, it turned out alright.  Natalie wanted a Princess Celestia cake.  I found an image to use for a frosting transfer, because I didn't have any idea how else to do the cake.  Then I spent several days before Natalie's birthday making tote bags, buying craft supplies, cleaning the house and getting all the other party stuff ready.  Then it was Natalie's birthday and I only had the afternoon to do the frosting transfer.  There was no part of me that wanted to make it, or was awake enough to do so.  I ran the thought past Nate of just buying a Princess Celestia to put on the cake.  He said sure.  I immediately felt a whole bunch of stress melt away.  Even with this decision, I still utterly and completely ran out of time to make this cake.  I had things under control... the night before the party, I made one layer of the cake and made the frosting.  But I didn't get to the second layer of the cake until the morning of the party.  All of a sudden, it was 30 minutes before the party and the second layer of the cake wasn't even cooled down yet and all of the frosting was still white.  I think I ended up decorating this cake in record time.  Start to finish I think I spent about 15 minutes on it.

 

Happy Birthday to Natalie!  One more week until she gets one more special day--her baptism!