Happy birthday Kaitlyn!

First off, the bad news.  My good camera broke.  In many ways, it is due.  I have put some serious use into that entry-level camera over the last 6 years.  But with Christopher between jobs, I can't justify upgrading it right now!  We are hoping we can order a $30 part and fix it, but we aren't sure.  In the meantime, the quality of photography is going to be rather low around here.

But the good new: Kaitlyn turned 6!

In some ways, I feel like we didn't do very much for Kaitlyn's birthday.  But since we spread it out over three days, that makes up for it!  On her actual birthday, she was just thrilled to wear her birthday hat to school.  We had gymnastics and pack meeting that night (Tyler's first pack meeting!), but I told her we could do whatever she wanted for dinner in-between those two.  And she picked Chinese food.   That was a great dinner- as usual, Tyler looked a little wobbly when we were walking out.  He likes his all you can eat buffets!
Of course, opening presents is a big highlight at this age.  And my favorite part is that it doesn't have to be big or expensive to be completely awesome.  She loved her makeup mirror thingy that Grandma gave her, and I made her a butterfly skirt.

See, it looks like a regular wrap skirt.  But when you un-wrap it . . .

There are wings!

Thank you, Pinterest.  I have to say, this was actually a fairly easy project.  Make wings, make skirt, join the two.  And it is a really fun concept!  The blog I found them on just has basic instructions, but it really wasn't that bad.

The next day we had a "Birthday playdate".  I wanted to do something low key, but still have some fun with her friends.  And since that was the event where I discovered my camera no longer functions (grrr) I have no pictures of her party.  But we did have fun.  She wanted to play pirates (which got a bit rowdy with all the boys that came) and limbo, we decorated and ate cake pops, and we watched a movie.  I have  to say I enjoy cake pops a lot more now that I found the little baker at the thrift store.  Mixing frosting into cake crumbs was too . . . "soggy cake"-like.  And we made sweet potato pancake balls in it the other day, too.

And today was the main activity she wanted to do.  Ice skating!  She has actually talked about this for while, and we've been putting it off, but after seeing how well she does at roller skating we decided to give it a try.  It wouldn't make a good birthday party, though.  At the roller rink you can ride a scooter around if you aren't solid on skates, but there aren't any other options at an ice rink.  Our rink has a special time for "small and tall" - kids under 12 with their parents.  Unfortunately, that time is 10 am on Thursdays. (???)  But since it would be cheaper AND less crowded, we figured it would be worth missing one day of school.

So she tried out the "walker" for a lap.

And then she held Daddy's hand for a minute.

And then she just skated.

Sure, she fell quite a few times, but she was a champ about it.  And we just couldn't believe how good she was.  When I asked her if it was as much fun as she thought it would be, she said "No.  It was a lot more fun!"  We had prepped her over and over that she would fall a lot, so when she went 10 minutes between falls that was awesome to her.  She was going faster than me!

She asked when we left if we could come back tomorrow.  I just wish it wasn't during school hours, or we would do this again next week!  I am glad we did it today, though.  There were a dozen people there total, and a few of the kids were pretty small and going nowhere fast.

My annual snapshot:

*Kaitlyn is so smart!  She is reading really well now, and is making good strides on math as well.  She isn't always very focused, and tends to give up sometimes rather then plug away at it, but she has natural talent in a lot of things.  She has picked up piano really well, and is pretty good at her gymnastics and ballet classes, too.  I am constantly amazed at it all, actually!

*She is also a good big sister.  She loves to help me, and takes good care of both her siblings.  The poor thing got the short end of the stick with the room swap, though.  Jasmine keeps her up late and wakes her up early.  But she does her best to handle it, and I can tell that she truly loves her siblings a lot.

*She LOVES Disney Junior.  I have to constantly pry all of the kids off of TV, to be honest.  But she just loves Sophia and Doc and Minnie and would sit there all day long if I let her.

*She is constantly creating things.  She writes songs on the piano (literally writing them down in her own music notation), turns leftover boxes into beds for her stuffed animals and different things every day, and writes books with stories in them all the time.  She loved learning to sew, too, so I'll have to keep encouraging that!

*Most of all, she is my social bug.  She loves to play with friends, play with her family, and play with her cousins.  I'm rather introverted myself, but I am glad she is better than me at making friends!