Birthday Extravaganza!

[altarflame]

The mad rush yesterday, literally all night long and this morning to make it all happen were NOT. FUN. I'm foggy headed from medication and dizzy and in pain from my ear, and was just plain tired, and Grant gets all weird whenever I'm sick in any way ever since 2007. BUT WE DID IT. And today was great and it's over and I'm glad for everything :)

The TEN YEAR OLD girl at the beginning of the day.


Balloon from Dad, who was taking Aaron to his show most of the day.


He also outdid himself the night before, baking chocolate cup cakes which he then filled with coconut cream pudding and frosted german style, and mini lemon poppyseed bundt cakes with drizzle, and he made from-scratch strawberry lemonade and ginger peach tea. And cleaned the bathrooms spotless for me and did tons of dishes...we went to bed at like 6:30 (I was doing tons of backed up sewing I'd been neglecting while ill, for presents), and were back up at 10:30.


Definitely a hit.




Shaun took all the pictures, and went to BJ's for pizzas for me AND the WD for candles AND brought a gift and was just generally awesome like he is.


Tiny girl with a tiny tea cup.




The balloon got away.


Aunt Laura made Annie a pumpkin cheesecake this year (this has been pre-arranged for months). She also shopped for me and came back with everything for fruit, veggie and dip and pickle and olive trays. I love everyone in my life so much it is ridiculous.


IT WAS SO AMAZINGLY INCREDIBLY GOOD.




She wanted to wear her charater shoes all day.


Beautiful baby Elizabeth.


Cammi, Elise, Isaac.


Sophia and Ananda crafting.

I LOVE Sophia's mom (Cybele), they live way up in the Grove or we would be together absolutely constantly. It was their first time at our house and I could just talk to that woman forever.

Beautiful sisters.

That's right, I said it.

Opening gifts.


Her friends are SO MUCH MORE INTERESTED in babies than she is; there is no novelty for her I guess :p Cammi, Christina and Elizabeth.


She loved her enormous new dance bag. There is just not room in anything we had before for the times she needs four changes of costume, 3 pairs of shoes, a book and lunch. So I made her one and am really happy with how it came out :)


THIS is the face of a little girl who was just given a LAPTOP by her Opa(!)! It's a Netbook and Grant spent awhile configuring it all tonight for her...




Annie and Opa.




She loved this skirt I made her (inspired by an Anna Maria Horner design). She CAN stand comfortably in it, but she likes to pose this way with it. It is just so her.




It was a really great day. Oma and Patrice (her cousin) showed up a little later and she just glowed all afternoon and evening. And CLEANED UP. That I can even remember right now she got:
-$20 from Nana and Pa
-$50 from Bobby
-$10, a bunch of amazingly "her" sort of clothes and some Silly Bandz from Oma (apparently silly bandz are all the rage at Dance Empire and so she was psyched about this - I had never even heard of them before)
-a balloon crafting kit from Kristina
-a little hand made Ocarina (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocarina) on a necklace from Shaun
-$25 Borders gift card from Cammi
-the newest Emily Windsnap book from Sophia
-A FREAKING LAPTOP, from Opa
-new shelves by her bed, from Daddy specifically
-an Usborne book and a stationary set from both of us
-and also from both of us, but made by me: a small tote, a dance bag, a couple of skirts, a shirt with a ton of cool embroidery stuff on it, and shasta daisies I planted weeks ago that are now seedlings for her...and I am so psyched that she LOVES this

I was really impressed by how well the older girls integrate and play with all the little kids. Neither of the four of them have any younger siblings but they were really quick to organize tag and hide and go seek with Jake, Isaac, Brian and Elise on the opposing team and things like that. They held chickens for awhile, too.

Then at the end of it all this crazy nut walks in the door from the sold out Dance Empire company show at the Colony Theater on Lincoln Rd - it was the first I'd seen of him quite this way ;)




Ananda had put some treats and cheesecake to the side for him, which made him really happy, I think more that she thought of him than anything. They were in some insulated catching up on each others' day bubble (YOU GOT A LAPTOP?!?!?!) for awhile.

*sigh* Good stuff. Off to finish the first season of Weeds with Grant...

Comments

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

I didn't have the internet at all until 10th or 11th grade. So 16-ish. Stupid AOL :p

Before that I had this monstrous enormous old Mac that used to belong to a school that as basically a desk-sized Tetris machine.

[daveandmonika.livejournal.com]

Yeah, 13 was 9th grade for me. Before that we had an Atari ST which was good for writing papers and printing them, but that was about it. I remember Mavis Beacon typing, Bentley's general store, Mixed up Mother Goose...we probably had 50 games on floppy disk.

They are really growing up in a different world than we did.

[theneolistickid.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I started on a Commodre 64 and I remember when a floppy disk was floppy... And the floppy drive was the size of a small microwave. Kids these days don't even know what a floppy disk IS... It's one of those little things that you can fit 1.44 MB on. You know, like about a minute of a song.

[theneolistickid.livejournal.com]

That icon is the bomb