Rachel's (fake) birthday

Today was Rachel's fake birthday. Her real one is on Sunday, but for all she knows, it's done and she is now 4 years old. We had her friends over for a party this morning, and our family birthday celebration tonight, and now we can enjoy our trip to visit Jake's family without carting any presents along. :)

I asked Rachel what kind of a party she wanted and even after letting her look through an Oriental Trading Company birthday mailer with all sorts of themes to choose from her choice was "I want a candy party!" Hmmm. So we went with a Candy Land party, which provided at least a better theme than plain old candy. We were trying to keep it small and simple, so she was allowed to invite 4 friends, since she's turning 4 this year. I think we succeeded on keeping it small, but sometimes I have a hard time with simple and go a little overboard.)

Rachel had a fun time helping put together the invitations for her friends. She wanted to carry them around and play with them all day after we made them, so we promptly delivered them.

I saw this cool Candy Land cake that I mostly copied from someone else online. I like King Kandy the best. I didn't have him on there at first, and Rachel pointed it out that "the guy at the end is missing!" So we found one of her Little People and put some candy on him and called it good.

I used paper plates on dowels to make some lollipops to line our sidewalk coming into our house, and some to decorate inside, too, along with some paper plates wrapped in cellophane to look like the little cinnamon or butterscotch candies. They turned out really cool, I thought.

I made these "lollipop trees" out of dum dums and Rachel wanted to eat one so bad. Every time Annie walked by all day she'd start crying and signing "please" unless she already had a lollipop in tow.

I also put out some rainbow goldfish and a rainbow of fruit.

When the kids showed up they got to make Fruit Loop necklaces and color Candy Land coloring pages.

Then we pulled out the big guns: Graham cracker houses to decorate with all sorts of candy (of which half got eaten in route to the houses, I'm sure).

We kind of had a rainbow sub-theme going, and since I wasn't going to make a pony pinata like Rachel requested, she was okay with my rainbow pinata suggestion and we went with that. All the kids got one turn to lightly tap the pinata, then on Rachel's second turn she whacked it good and I got a great action shot:

Oh, the joys of candy and toys!

Presents were a hit, as always. She got plenty of fun loot to keep her busy.

All the cute little party animals:

Rachel and everyone else got a good dose of sugar just in time to spoil their lunch. It was a fun party and Rachel was very happy all day. From when she first woke up and saw the decorations I put up after she was in bed last night I heard over and over again "Thank you SOOO much! I love it. Oh, I love my birthday. Thank you for the pretty decorations. Thank you for..." etc. What a polite little girl. :) But really she was so excited, and it was fun to see.

Tonight she got to open her family presents. She got stuck on the new books we got her, wanting to read all of them. Eventually we pulled her away and she opened the rest of the presents.

Her favorite surprise of the night:

A new bike! She had a fun time riding around, and after a few turns on the sidewalk started getting the hang of the petals. I guess it's different than her tricycle/big wheel-type bike she had, and getting the hang of braking is still in the works. But I foresee many bike rides in our future.

Happy birthday, Rachel! We love you lots!