Rachel's 4th Birthday!

4th Birthday Cake made by Brandon

SO THRILLED with the cake her daddy made her!!

Sunsplash!!

What a fun birthday for Rachel!  If any of you follow me on Facebook, then you'll be surprised by everything FLAMINGO!  Here's what I posted about a week and a half before her birthday, "My (nearly) 4 year old daughter REALLY wants a transformer birthday (and both her and I are completely unfamiliar with everything to do with transformers).  Thank you older-boy cousins for having memorable transformer parties.  :)  Transformer little girl birthday ... here we come!"  She has honestly been talking about her transformer birthday party for the last 4 months, and every time she'd talk about it, I'd try to give her a different idea, but she kept coming back to it.  So when I told her she needed to decide, she chose transformers.  So then I sat her down at the computer with me and we looked at transformer cakes together, and she didn't like any of them.  Then she said, "Mom, how about a flamingo party instead!?  Sorry but I want to change my mind."  I let her sit on this idea for another 2 days, and it stuck, so I gratefully went with it.

I really wanted to do a simple family party, rather than friend party (we can start those around age 5 I'm thinking) but when we're celebrating it in AZ, there's not much family to celebrate with us.  I stressed about this for a bit, but then we got creative and came up with a pretty good solution.  We celebrated her birthday on Saturday instead of Sunday so that we could give some attention to daddy on Father's Day.  We took the kids to Sunsplash, which is a fun waterpark down here and spent hours in the sunshine playing in the water.  Rachel loved all the big slides with dad, and Andrew and I enjoyed relaxing in the kiddie areas and lazy river.  Bless his tender little heart, he's not much for adventure yet (like getting splashed by huge buckets of water or even going on baby water slides).  But it worked out great, since my ankle is still swollen and sore! Ouch!

Rachel got lots of presents from family in Utah, so she got to open presents all throughout the day.  She was such a good girl, kind to her brother, and even shared her presents.  When she opened a stuffed animal toy set with Simba & Nala that was from Andrew, without even hesitating, she kept Simba for herself and she gave Nala to Andrew.  She also got "doodle bear", a scooter and new crayons from Grandma & Grandpy, roller-skates and new outfits from Nana & Papa, a new baby Simba (same one that she lost on the airplane) from Disneyland from her cousins, a toddler digital camera from mom and dad.  We also signed her up for a singing and dancing camp in July that was also part of her birthday gift.

We invited the Olsen's over (friends from our ward) for cake, ice cream and smoothies in the evening.  It was fun for Rachel to play with her good friends, Sami and Janie while the adults visited.

And of course I have to write about the cake, which turned out amazing!!  Have I expressed how stressed out I get about children's birthday cakes?  It's ridiculous, but it nearly gives me hives.  I just feel so much pressure to make an incredible over-the-top cake.  And when this is NOT a talent I have (plus, I don't even enjoy eating cake!) it causes me undo stress.  This is where my wonderful husband comes in to save the day!  Cake decorating runs in his family (his aunt made our wedding cake and his grandma, mom and sister are all talented in this arena as well), and he is really good at it too!  He just doesn't get to practice very often.  His mom tells me that he started decorating his own cakes at the age of 7 since he had in his mind what he wanted.  So yes, Brandon made the flamingo cake and even made the fondant from scratch.  He'll point out all the flaws on the cake if you ask him, but overall, it turned out so cute and exactly what Rachel wanted.