Emma's Birthday

I'm a terrible mother! I didn't post anything about Emma's birthday. It lasted several days and I'm still recovering from it. We have preschool at our house twice a week, so rather than throw a "friends" party (which I don't do until they are 5 anyway, but all of her other friends have been doing parties) I decided since we'd have everybody there anyway we'd just do a little more "party" things. The girls were given crowns to decorate and the boys were given shields to play with (as the prince or the knight). Then we played a Disney bingo game and decorated cupcakes. I gave the girls some princess rings and the boys toy cars as favors. She seemed to have fun. We took her out to dinner that night-her choice was Golden Corral so that she could have a little bit of everything. She DID NOT want anybody coming to sing to her at the restaurant. This was two days before her birthday. The day before her birthday I tried to make special for her, but we ended up going to Swiss Days with my sister in-law and her boy that is three days older than Emma. We had the family over that night for cake and ice cream and she hit the jackpot with presents. Baby dolls, dance outfits, baseball with mitt, bat and tee, a game, lipgloss, clothes and a princess tent complete with sleeping bag, flashlight and compass. We tried to set up the tent in the living room for the girls to have a "sleepover" but it wouldn't stand up and then broke right in the middle of one of the poles. So now I need to try and return it. The day of her birthday her best friend had her own princess birthday party because her birthday was the following day (sunday) so Emma went there all confused about whose birthday it actually was. She had a lot of fun though. She's 4, she still doesn't know WHEN her birthday is, just that she had a party and presents.

Her cake, by the way, was a complete disaster. I had this great recipe for a cheesecake poundcake that I wanted to do and I even added strawberries to it which are Em's favorite. I went to great lengths to make this stupid cake be the best ever...and it totally flopped! Em wanted me to make her a barbie dress cake. This is the cake with the actual barbie doll stuck in the top of the cake and then you decorate it to look like the dress. Anyway, I made this cake for her two year birthday but she wanted it again. The cake that year didn't look right because the Barbie doll was a little too small. So this year I had the right size, made my own buttercream frosting and had everything ready. the cake wouldn't come out of the bowl despite my tricks and then when it did finally start to come out it started to run, the center wasn't cooked all the way through! Blast that homemade recipe! This all happened about 10 minutes before family was supposed to arrive. I grabbed the card and handed it to Jason and said, "go buy her a cake." They came back with kind of a lame one because the bakery had closed already. Anyway, I had made another cake that wasn't a frosting cake because I know the adults don't really like all the sugar and my parents are weight watcher gurus and I wanted them to have something. So I made this really yummy fruit layer cake...well, I was told it was yummy, I didn't actually get to taste it. I had the sugar cake and in fact (if you tell Emma this I will deny it) I ate the whole thing by myself over the course of two days. What? I'm pregnant ok? It's what the baby wanted! So, this fruit cake tasted better than it looked because to me it looked like it was going to fall over. All the pics will be in the slide show as soon as I get that up.

Well, Emma I hope you had a memorable 4th birthday because I certainly won't forget it!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY EMMA!