Elsie Turned 6!

My little girl turned 6 last week.  I just noticed this week how big she is getting and how much more independent she is.  She is a driven little girl, and it's fun to watch.  It's fun to teach her things and then watch and listen to her process it.  I taught her the spanish alphabet, and for a month everywhere she went she skipped and sang the alphabet.  She practices counting to 100 in the car, and stays up late reading books.  Yet, if anything gets too structured, when it's not her doing the scheduling, she is sooo not interested.  She loves painting and all things arts and crafts at home, but getting her to her art club every week is such a hassle!  Elsie definitely has her own mind.  Her school lessons are often self directed and lead.  This girl knows what she wants, which is why planning a birthday party with her was so fun!  She had some great ideas and was all about helping implement those plans into action. To begin, she wanted a Jungle/Safari birthday where everyone could come dressed up as an animal if they so desired.  It was inspired by her favorite stuffed animal, "Tigey".  Hence, she dressed up as a tiger.  She wanted to bust open some pinatas, so we spent one day with balloons and paper-mache, and another decorating them into animal pinatas.  Elsie knew exactly how she wanted to decorate them, but put up with some suggestions from Mom (phew!).  Here they are:

 Elsie also wanted a game of tag and pin the tail on the tiger.  With a couple extra games I turned it into a hunt where the "animal" children had to escape from the zoo and find their way back to the jungle.  I think I had just as much fun pretending as the kids! 

 This was the first time I had a birthday table with everything set-up together beforehand.  It helping in organization and made for a pretty picture.

 Here is Elsie, our little tiger birthday girl!

 Mike was amazing and found a cotton candy machine at a second-hand store for a few dollars.  It really loaded the kids with sugar and added to the excitement!  He was good to make some for each of the kids.

 Here goes all our hard work with the pinatas!  It was fun, all around!

At the end of the day I told her I was glad she had such a great birthday.  She said, "It was more than great!  It was more than awesome!  It was the best birthday ever!"  I was happy to hear it.