Veronica's Fourth Birthday

Veronica turned 4 years old yesterday.  She has been looking forward to this for months. When we would go hiking in Yellowstone I would ask the kids questions too keep them distracted from how long a trail was.  Our favorite things to talk about were Halloween and Birthdays.  I'd ask her what kind of cake she wanted and what toys she wanted.  She often liked to find her birthday on the calendar on the fridge of the RV. 

When we moved to Pocatello she really started talking about her birthday. She was always talking about having four candles on her cake. 

The birthday preparations started the Saturday before her birthday.  Brandon had an extra welding class that day so the kids and I were on our own.  I decided we'd go grocery shopping and pick out Veronica's cake and frosting while we were there. I'd unpacked the box with the birthday party hats a day or two earlier.  Derrick was so excited to go get the cake that he wanted to wear a birthday hat.  Everyone else followed his lead.  Charlotte and Lydia thought better of the plan, and took their hats off before we went in the store. But Derrick and Veronica happily wore their hats the whole time we were shopping.  

 Everyone wanted to make the cake as soon as we got home, but Veronica's birthday wasn't until the next Sunday.  I told the kids the soonest we could make the cake was Friday.  So as soon as they all got home from school on Friday we started making the cake.  I'd bought two cake mixes so I split the kids into two groups and each group mixed up a box.

We always line our cake pans with wax paper.  I let Charlotte and Lydia cut out the circles.  Derrick wanted to do one two so I hurried and traced a circle for him and handed him the scissors.  I didn't need a third circle so I figured he could just cut however he wanted for the fun of it.  He surprised me by cutting an almost perfect circle.  Two years ago he wouldn't even touch scissors.  And now look what he can do.  Occupational Therapy really works.

 We greased the cake pans and then poured in the batter.  Then came everyone's favorite part - licking the bowls!

 On Friday night we went bowling at the bowling alley on the ISU campus.  This place is pretty inexpensive to begin with, but we got in for free this time because we were there for the ISU's Veteran Student Organization.  We all loved bowling when we lived on Fort Rucker so I knew Veronica would love to do this for a birthday activity.  She had so much fun.

 Before we left the house Derrick had been kind of crabby and didn't remember what bowling was. He kept saying he didn't want to go to "a building".  When we entered the bowling alley he started jumping up and down and yelling happily about balls crashing. He was so happy to be there.  Veronica was also jumping up and down and yelling, "I love this."  All the kids cheered eachother on and clapped and high fived no matter how many pins were knocked down.  It was super cute.  And they all loved watched the ball return.  

 As the game went on the kids' energy waned a bit.  Veronica wanted to sit with me between turns.

 Its hard to tell, but I ended up winning the game.  I was bowling strikes by the end.  One of these days I want to go bowling with just Brandon and see how well I do when I'm not distracted by kids.

 It was after 9:00 when we got the kids to bed on Friday night.  Brandon and I were hoping the kids would sleep in the next day, but instead they were all awake at the usual time of 6:00.  So we got up and had breakfast.

We had a big day planned and the first thing we needed to do was clean up the house.  A few months ago we invented "The Cleaning Game"  We have a bunch of jobs like "sweep kitchen floor"  or "vacuum living room" written on index cards.  We split into two teams (Usually it's me and Charlotte against Brandon and Lydia with Derrick and Veronica "helping" occationally.) and each team gets 7 or so cards.  Then we race to see who can finish all their jobs first. Which ever team wins gets something like ice cream or cookies. The kids LOVE this game and they all work really had to win the game.  Brandon and I love the game and always slow down or speed up so that it magically comes out a tie every time.

Less than 90 minutes later all the rooms were vacuumed or swept, the bathrooms were clean, the dishes were done, and the garbage was empty.  We'd told the kids that the winning team would get a big scoop of frosting after we were done frosting Veronica's birthday cake. So that meant we had to frost her cake. This picture may look fun, but really it was kind of stressful to have that many little hands helping.  Brandon ended up doing most of the frosting.

Every time I asked Veronica what kind of a cake she wanted she told me she wanted a "chocolate, red, blue, yellow, green, pink cake."  I finally figured out that she was talking about sprinkles. So I decided to go all in and cover her cake with sprinkles.  Thanks to Pinterest I was able to figure out how to do it.  (The trick is you frost the sides first and then pick the cake up and roll it in sprinkles, then you put sprinkle on the top.)

 I was pretty happy with how it turned out.

 We'd originally planned to go to the Museum of Natural History at ISU as Veronica's birthday activity.  But the kids were acting completely bonkers.  And Brandon and I weren't in great moods. Going bowling had taken up quite a bit of our energy, and we weren't sure we could handle taking rambunctious kids to a museum.  So instead we went to a park.

The park was cold so that didn't last long.  Eventually we just came home and Brandon, Derrick, Veronica, and I all took naps. That seemed to solve our bad mood problem.

That evening we had movie night and watched the first Tinkerbell movie.  Veronica had picked it out at the library.  We've all seen it before, but it's been a few years.  I'm not sure Veronica remembered it at all.  She loved it.

Then it was finally bedtime. Charlotte and Lydia wanted to stay up and help blow up balloons, but they were so tired.  I just did it myself.

Everyone woke up early again on Sunday, but I'd had a better nights sleep so it wasn't such a big deal.  I heard Charlotte and Lydia creep into the living room and whisper, "Mom blew up the balloons without us."  Soon I went downstairs and got Veronica out of bed.  I told her it was her birthday.  She was so happy.  This picture is of Lydia, but I'm pretty sure Veronica was acting the same way.

Everyone had fun with the balloons.  Veronica had listed off the same long list of colors when I asked her what color balloons she wanted. So I just went with all the colors.

Charlotte made this card for Veronica all by herself.

Veronica had picked out Lucky Charms as what she wanted for breakfast.

I added cinnamon rolls (that I'd made last week and then froze the dough) and lemon poppy seed muffins.

 This was the first time we've had a childs' birthday on a Sunday so we weren't quite sure what to do.  We ended up watching the Testaments Movie before church.

Veronica has inherited all of Charlotte and Lydia's old dresses but she refuses to wear most of them. A few months ago I realized that she didn't want to wear dresses that I described as "cute." I asked her what kind of dresses she liked.  I asked, do you want to look strong? no. Do you want to look beautiful? no.  Do you want to look in charge? Yes!  She only wanted dresses that make her look in charge. (Is this a child after my own heart or what?) Brandon says we need to buy her a business suit style dress. Right now she only likes a little plaid dress that Lydia called the Anna Dress. And it's quickly becoming too small.  I tried giving her a new dress that was black, but she was not a fan.  So she went to church in her little plaid Anna dress.

We'd invited Brandon's parents, Steve and Jacque, to come spend the day with us.  They arrived during the opening song in Sacrament Meeting.  The kids were so excited to see them.  Veronica sat on Steve's lap and didn't move.  She ended up falling asleep on him. I wish it was appropriate to take pictures during Sacrament Meeting because she looked so happy in his arms.

In Primary Veronica received some candy and a pinwheel.  She loved watching the pinwheel spin in the breeze as we walked home.  And I got this great picture of her walking with Brandon to make up for the one I couldn't take earlier.

Veronica wanted pizza for dinner so we had that soon after we got home.  While it cooked the kids took Steve and Jacque on a tour of the house.

After dinner Veronica opened presents.  Everyone was super curious about what she would get.  Derrick and I had bought her presents while everyone else was at school.

Veronica was happy about every gift she received there were lots of shouts of "I LOVE THIS!"

The gift that got the biggest reaction was the DVD Moana.  I'd had a lot of trouble picking out a toy for Veronica.  She'd asked for "Cars and Dolls."  The cars were easy enough, but the dolls came as a surprise.  Veronica doesn't really play with dolls and I didn't want to buy her one that she didn't care about. I'd even taken her to the store to see what kind of doll she wanted and she hadn't really reacted stongly to any of them, but she had liked all the Moana stuff.  So I figured we should get the DVD. That turned out to be a good plan.

 The kids played around for a few minutes and then it was finally time for cake.  Here we are singing.

And here's Veronica with her cake.  She was so happy with it. 

And as tradition, everyone else got a chance to blow out a candle.

Steve and Jacque had to leave soon after cake.  We decided to relax our "only church movies on Sunday's" rule and watch Moana.  I'm so glad we did that.  The kids all watched Moana when Jacque babysat them for our anniversary and when we moved, but Brandon and I haven't seen it.  I was  blown away by how good it was. I may or may not have cried during the We Know The Way sequence.

When the movie was over Veronica wrapped her arms around me and said, "Thank you for Birthday mamma."  I loved hearing that.

When I put the kids to bed Veronica usually wants me to sing her the Spiders web song.  Its about a dream catcher and it goes like this:

It's a web like a spiders web, 
Made of silver light and shaddow.
Hung in my room by the moon each night.

It's a web made to catch a dream
Hold it fast til I awaken, 
As if to tell me, 
My dream is of you.

I've sung this song for almost a year, but lately Veronica has started listening to the lyrics.  She likes to describe how she'll catch a dream.  First she said she would chase it and he dream would say, "Ahh it's Veronica."  Lately she's stared saying she'll hide and the dream will say, "Where's Veronica?" and then she'll jump out and catch it.

I love hearing her talk about things like this.  I love how for her, even something as passive as "catching a dream" is actually an active adventure.

Watch out world, Veronica is four now and she's as tenacious as ever.