#2 turns 9!

Today is Baby Girl #2's birthday.  We kind of celebrated all weekend long with her.  Or more correctly, she's gotten pampered all weekend.  And she has taken full advantage of it!

Friday we went to Chuck E. Cheese.  I'm sure you remember that that is one of my least favorite places to go.  We thought there was another pizza place that had games in it here, but when we looked it up online there were no games.  So Chuck E. Cheese it was.  Fun was had by all the girls.  Although I think #1 is getting why I don't like it.  She told us that she was disappointed because the games there don't give out hardly any tickets.  Exactly! 

This is what $30 in tokens will get you!

 Anyway, after Chuck E. Cheese we took them to get an ice cream cone.  Baskin Robbins has some of the same flavors now that they did when I was a kid.  Anyone else remember the bubble gum ice cream that had actual bubble gum pieces in it?  Seriously, who thought that was a good idea?  The girls enjoy me telling them what flavors I used to get.

For dinner we had nachos, #2's request for the night.  We also had red velvet cupcakes, also the request of #2.  Want to know my Mommy fail moment of the night?  When I went to put candles on one of the cupcakes I realized that I only had 8.  She turned 9.  Kind of defeats the purpose of having candles if you don't have the right amount. My solution?  Hubby held a lit match up next to the cupcake as we walked it out singing.  It counts, right?  I think it is safe to say that we were done with junk food for the rest of the weekend.

Early in the week last week I got online with #2 to have her pick out an 18'' doll.  Why she wants one, I don't know, but she did.  We ended up getting one that was exactly what she wanted on Ebay.  It actually came on Friday, but she didn't know it so she didn't open it up until today.  She loves it!

The biggest moment of today was that she got to get her ears pierced.  #1 got her ears pierced the first time when she was 8.  Turns out her ears are very sensitive and they got infected a couple of times and we had to let them grow back in.  She got them pierced again at 9 and has done much better with them. Unfortunately for #2, that experience taught me that 9 might be a better age to get the ears pierced than 8, so #2 had to wait until this year.  She's been talking about it since her last birthday.  She was excited all day today, but as we got closer to actually getting it done she got more and more nervous.  I took her to dinner with just the two of us first, thinking that after she got it done she wouldn't feel like eating.  In retrospect, I probably should have taken her to eat afterward.  She was so nervous before hand that she could hardly eat anything.  Even when the staff made her a birthday treat, she just couldn't eat.

They made a really cute little palm tree out of bananas and kiwis

 But she did very well getting them done.  She cried a little, which is totally OK.  But now she is feeling fine, and loving her earrings.  She feels so grown up and special. 

Look close, they're there!

 I'm just amazed that it was 9 years ago that she was born.  She was so unexpected and arrived at a difficult time in our lives, but we are truly blessed to have her as our daughter.  She is so much like me in so many ways, which is great for the rest of the world, but it drives me a little nuts.  She has the best laugh and biggest heart.  She loves to think she is so grown up, but she still loves to play with her little sisters.  She creates songs and plays that are beyond impressive.  I can't wait to see what the coming years with her brings.  I don't know what they'll hold, but I can guarantee they'll be a blast!

I can be crafty!

***I apologize for the length of this post.  I thought I had moved on from the trauma this caused me, but once I started I realized I'm still scarred.  

I would not consider myself to be a crafty person.  I like the idea of crafting, just not the actual process.  I like getting everything organized and sorted out and lists made of what all I am going to need.  Because I'm a list person.  But I really dislike the clean-up.  Even if it is just me, having to get everything cleaned up when I'm tired and grouchy after doing the craft is a pain.  Not to mention the fact that I have never once had a craft go according the plan.  Ever. 

As for doing crafts with the girls, kill me now!  I wish I was the type of Mom who loved to do crafts with my children.  My girls certainly like doing them.  But I can not stand doing it with them.  Not only do they make a huge mess, regardless of what it is we are actually making, they very rarely do it correctly.  Imagine that, a child not being able to flawlessly execute a craft that I myself can not seem to make look right.  And even though my head knows this, my oh-so-carefully-kept-under-control control freak nature is driven absolutely nuts when my 8 year old does not evenly space the jewels she is gluing to the paper.  Now, before you think I'm a completely awful person, I have never taken a project away from my child to do it for them because theirs doesn't look right.  But I secretly want to. And it makes me twitch that I can't.  So you will rarely see me sitting down to craft. 

Despite all this, for some inexplicable reason, I decided that I would make a large majority of the Christmas gifts to give out to family this year.  I blame Pinterest and my friend B for guilting me into joining.  She knows who she is.  Most of them turned out OK.  None of them turned out as planned.  And I have already instructed Hubby to remind me of everything I went through to make all this stuff next year if I should happen to temporarily lose my sanity again.  Here are a few of the things I made.

Cinnamon applesauce ornaments.  They're kind of cute, they smell really good.  Baby Girl #3 was able to help me with them.  However, once done I wondered if they had any true functionality.  The thought was to have them for several years to help the house smell good.  I gave several away to different people and I still have quite a few.  If they still smell good next year it will have been worth it.

Multi-colored crayons.  Made for Baby Girl #4 and the two cousins that are close to her age.  You basically melt down several pieces of different crayons.  Turned out OK.  Uglier than I thought.  This is probably due to the fact that I was so desperate to not have to peel the paper off 100 crayons that I recruited Baby Girls #1 and #2 to do it for me.  They apparently decided that all the gray, black and brown ones should be done first.  They were probably conspiring against me because I won't do any crafts with them.

Cute, right?  WORST CRAFT EVER!!!!!!!  It seemed like the simplest craft.  Cut some cord and some old t-shirts up, braid them together and then glue a magnet on each end.  I was even going to have #1 and #2 help with this one.  Only to discover #2 doesn't know how to braid.  News to me!  #1 has known for a while and #3 just recently taught herself as well.  I just assumed #2 had taught herself as well.  That was not the case.  Also, the lady whose blog I read on how to do this simply stated, "Glue a magnet on the end with tacky glue".  Did she mention that tacky glue takes forever to dry?  Or that if you try to put it down after 30 minutes thinking it is dry enough that the magnet will fall off because it is not, in fact, dry at all?  Did she mention that the magnets themselves are a real pain to find in a craft store, or that the size of the magnet matters?  Did she mention that if you try to order magnets online because you can not find the right size in 5 different stores that they might not be strong enough to actually hold the ends of a bracelet together?  Or that if you try to switch to a hot glue gun because you have wasted hours of your life and only finished one stupid bracelet that it will not work if you already put tacky glue on the bracelet?  In case you have missed the sarcastic tone, no, she did not mention any of that.  I could go on with several more things that went wrong.  Suffice it to say, I made several of the bracelets for my girls and their friends.  I don't know if any of them can be worn.  And I don't really care at all.  If I never see those bracelets again I'll be fine with that.

This was my favorite.  It didn't turn out as planned either, but at this point I didn't care at all.  I made one for my Mom and made one for myself at the same time.  I really liked it and it's a little awkward to ask someone to make something for you. In case you're wondering, my Mom and I both have a tendency to snort when we start laughing really hard.  I love it when my Mom does it, it makes everyone else laugh even harder.  It's not so cute when I do it, but I'm usually laughing too hard at that point to care what other people think about my laugh.

That's all the pictures I have.  I made some other things--sugar scrubs that turned out OK, rice bags that you can heat up, bath crayons for the little girls that are basically colored soap, some seek and find bags.  I don't know how much everyone will use what I made for them.  At this point I just hope they lie to me and tell me they use it all the time.  Until next December when they admit that it has just sat in their home not being used so that I can quell any desire to make anything for anyone.  EVER AGAIN!