It comes without warning. It sneaks up on me every year. Somewhere in between Emily's birthday and Christmas, Adaline grows another year older. This year I was determined to embrace the Christmas spirit while celebrating her birthday. We decided to do so by enjoying our (first) annual gingerbread house decorating party. What a mess it makes, but the memories are so worth it. It was enlightening to hear from all the kids (boys & girls) that only one of them had ever decorated a gingerbread house before. I'm so glad we were a part of that for them and surprisingly each and every one of them really got into it! This experience was so much fun for all of us and we've decided to try to do this every year to celebrate her birthday.
After decorating the gingerbread houses, Adaline blew out the candles on her "gingerbread birthday cake", opened gifts and all the kids watched the Twilight movie. It was actually much better than I anticipated it would be and I look forward to watching New Moon once it's on DVD.
On her actual birthday, we celebrated her birthday with an asian-inspired cake...across the top it says "Happy Birthday" in Japanese and was decorated by Melanie with chocolate cherry blossom trees. If you'll notice, we learned something with this particular birthday cake. I learned not to intermix tall, skinny sparkle candles with shorter traditional birthday candles. Hilarity ensued of course, but well...now we know. True to her heart, she was given more art supplies and a much-needed cabinet to organize them. I think she had a great birthday!
