A Very Sprinkle Birthday

Caroline celebrated her fifth birthday this week.  At 2:30 a.m. on her birthday, Caroline came into our room, got in bed, and said, "I wish it was morning."  Mmm Hmm.  At 4:30 a.m., Josiah came into our room excited about Caroline's birthday.  He came in four more times between 4:30 and 6:00 a.m.  At least Caroline fell back asleep and didn't get up til 6:37 (which is early for her).  I think Josiah may be the type of father that wakes up his kids early in the morning for every holiday.  Wake up!!!  It's your birthday!!  Wake up!!  It's Christmas!!!  Wake up!  It's Administrative Professionals Day!!  He is nothing but enthusiastic.

For breakfast, she had picked out sprinkle donuts with pink frosting.  The only place that I knew that had these donuts was Dunkin Donuts.  I knew I had seen a DD somewhat near our house before, so we headed in the direction of that store.  When, after some time, it became clear that the store was no longer there (it had switched to a Subway), we discussed again.  We could try a donut shop 5 minutes from our house but that was without the guarantee of pink frosting and sprinkles.  That wasn't good enough.  Caroline needed a guarantee.  So, we headed off to the other Dunkin Donuts, much further from our house.  The whole trip took a little more than 90 minutes.  It better have been one durn good pink frosting-sprinkle donut.  The whole drive there I kept saying in my head, this is sort of crazy to drive this far.  It didn't help that we were out with morning commuters.  But look at that face:

After filling up on fried dough with sugar, we came back and Caroline got to play with all of her toys.  Both sets of grandparents know her well and got her two dresses each.  Caroline loves her dresses.  They got her the Goodnight Moon bunny and a Cinderella doll, a Hello Kitty cup and coloring book, and much much more.  She was just screaming in delight with each gift she opened.

We got her a dollhouse.  She's been talking about one for quite a while now.  When she saw the box, she said, "A dollhouse!  I always wanted a dollhouse!"

Josiah helped me put it together.  We had our trusty Allen wrench in hand and got it all assembled.  Then the kids unpacked all the furniture and after everything was unpacked and put away we realized that the dollhouse came with no dolls.  Lots of furniture, but no one to sit on it.

We looked it up on amazon and found that dollhouse accessories are big business.  I said I'd foot the bill for the dolls, since I really thought it would come with them.  But if the boys wanted the bunk beds set with the space rocket toy, they were footing the bill for that.  Caroline wanted the baby/crib/stroller set.

Her cousins came to the rescue, when they gave her a zoo set that came with people.  So, now she has a zoo area with a caretakers house right next door.

For lunch, the kids had delicious Happy Meal from McDonald's.  I was reminded once again why we never go to McDonald's.  It's not because their food is not exactly the healthiest.  It is because every time we go at least one child throws a tantrum.  Every. Single. Time.  This time it happened to be the birthday girl herself.  When I passed the red boxes of happiness to each child (in the car), Henry had the audacity to look in his box first and announce that the toy was Snoopy.  Caroline ripped her toy out of the box of happiness, threw it on the floor of the car and screamed a loud guttural scream.  She had the boldness to ask me to pick it up for her.  I don't think so.   

Happy again.

In the afternoon, Caroline helped me make her cake.  We made a vanilla cake and she wanted it to look like this:

We made this.  Caroline poured the sprinkles on the cake.  She liked it.  I realized that making a cake and frosting from scratch is really an art and I'm not an artist.

Caroline wanted Sweet Tomatoes for dinner, but it wouldn't have worked well on her actual birthday, so ended up going Saturday.  She finished her meal there with a bowl filled with sprinkles.  Usually I keep track of the number of spoonfuls that make it in her bowl, but somehow I was distracted, because this was one full bowl.  She ate every single one.

I joined the Wheel Watchers Club from Wheel of Fortune.  We watch it nearly every night and the kids always ask if we have a Wheel Watcher number at the end of the show.  Once I signed up, Josiah was convinced that we were going to win the $10,000.  He kept saying that if I won, we'd get $2000 each.  Good division skills, son, but that's probably not exactly how it'll get divided.
Wheel of Fortune popped up again for Josiah's CC presentation.  This week he told his class about Pat Sajak.  He mostly just spoke about the show and that he was the host, but it was a cohesive presentation.  As his tutor said, he made them all want to go watch Wheel of Fortune.

Caroline's presentation was a chunk of sidewalk.  We went on several walks around the neighborhood this week and on one of those, Caroline picked up a chunk of sidewalk that had broken off.  I asked her what she was going to say about it.  She said, "It's a piece of concrete and your feet can go on it."  Then she demonstrated how her foot could go on it.  I thought she'd choose a new birthday gift to talk about, but chunk-of-sidewalk won out.

At church today we saw what Daylight Savings Day combined with the start of Spring Break can do to a class.  The class I help in usually has about 14 kids in it.  Today, it had 6.  One girl who usually stays for both hours, got picked up early.  She was upset because she hadn't done the craft yet (which we do during my hour).  She tried to come back in the class, but then her mom said something to her and the little girl said, "Chalupas?!!" and out she walked.

Todd took the boys to Sam's Club after church where they ate their weight in samples.  They sat down for the Irish beef stew and mashed potatoes.  It's always a good free lunch.

Todd also introduced the kids to the spork.  They were impressed.

This week is spring break.  The kids have a list of things they want to do - Children's Museum, parks/playgrounds, friend's houses.  I have a list of things to do as well.  We are hoping for long days to enjoy it all.

And I'll leave with a quote from Caroline when she plays Guess Who.  As she flips her board so that all the people fall down, she says, "They all bow down to me because I'm the queen."