Annie has reached the ripe old age of 6! She wanted a monster birthday, and since we decided to wait until after Halloween for her party, she got to celebrate twice, once on her birthday, and once a week later.
We had a family dinner with Grandma and Grandpa and her cousins and uncle that live in town. She helped me decorate the cake.
Of course presents were the exciting part of it all.
Grandpa brought some entertainment. His iPad has a magical ability to call to every kid in the house as soon as it gets turned on.
Annie seen those mermaid blankets that are crocheted and wanted one, but "not knitted." She wanted soft fabric, so I made this for her. It was actually pretty darn easy. She recently developed a love for Shopkins (I guess she heard about them at school?) so she got some from Grandma Knight. She also got a gummy maker that she can use to make her own gummy worms and gummy bears.
Besides the small molds, it included one big mold for a HUGE gummy bear. She was in heaven.
A week later we had a few friends come over for a Monster Bash. I had a fun time practicing some cake decorating with various tips. Annie loved the "hairy" monsters.
Annie also helped make this piñata.
The kids made their own monster masks and monster bags.
Then they played Pin the Eye on the Monster.
We headed outside to play a few more monster games, including 3-legged races, eyeball race, and walking on stilts.
Then we got to what everyone was waiting for: the piñata. Because we were almost free of Halloween candy I did not relish the thought of them all replenishing their candy supply all over again, so I just put in a little bit of candy, and a few non-candy prizes. Everyone got enough that they were happy, but few enough that my kids' candy was gone by the end of the day for the most part. Win-win.
After the piñata we went in for cupcakes and presents, then let the kids run wild until their parents came (about 10 minutes later).
We had fun celebrating Annie. We are happy to have her in our family. She is enjoying kindergarten, though it is super lame in my opinion, and doesn't challenge her at all. I talked to the teacher about giving her different work sometimes, since she can already read level 3 and 4 readers (pre-chapter books) and they spend their time learning two new letters a week, and working on counting, where she can already add and subtract up to 10 or more. There hasn't been much change except for the one day when I was volunteering and instead of having Annie do the letter sheet, she listed as many words as she could starting with that letter, which is good step. If only she would have that every day. But I guess kindergarten is more for learning about how school works and getting along with friends, and she's doing ok there. When you're a smarty-pants like Annie you just have to deal with doing stuff you already know how to do sometimes. (Unless we were to homeschool, which, while it would go over a lot better with Annie than with Rachel because of their different personalities, would make me crazy--I can't imagine fitting in something that big into my schedule everyday with how busy I've been feeling lately.)
Annie is more shy among groups she doesn't know that well than I would have ever guessed. She's a leader (aka bossy) when she's around her cousins that live here, and is very loud and crazy with friends she knows from church, but at school she's a totally different person who is quiet and shy and docile. It's a little crazy to me to see the transformation. :)
She is very much a gift person and loves giving and getting gifts. She'll take a cool rock to give to a friend or make a little craft or picture for her teacher at church sometimes. She also loves one-on-one time with me or Jacob. She has an hour when she gets home from school twice a week when Ryan is at school and Megan is napping when she gets my undivided attention and she looks forward to it so much. She's always excited to choose what we get to do together for our alone time. Often it is cooking, or playing board games, two of her favorite pastimes.
Annie is excited to be growing up, losing teeth, and getting to stay up an extra 5 minutes now that she's 6. It's the little things. :)
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