I'm 5!

Even the winter storm warning and the 7 inches of snow didn't keep us from celebrating Grace's 5th Birthday! I'm not much of a party person. The boys will testify to the very few "friend" parties that we ever had as they were growing up. Just like I remember from my childhood, birthday parties are family affairs. Grace's first party was no different. Vince was going to leave on Friday, so we had to have the party midweek, which excluded my sister's families since both of them are teaching. The storm kept Grandma and Grandpa away, too. We just didn't want Vince to miss it, so we had a small group...Mom, Dad, Adam, Blaise, Vince, Aunt Terri, Uncle Larry, Aunt Sara, and Rachelle.

Mark picked up the cake and called me from Walmart...the face on the cake doesn't look like Mickey Mouse. Somehow, the lady (who said she could put Mickey Mouse's face on the cake) thought that Mickey had pointed ears like a rabbit. I wish I could have seen Mark (who hates conflict) trying to explain to the lady that he wanted her to make the ears round. Mental Note: Don't get a cake from Walmart next time...It really didn't matter, because when we asked Grace who it was, she told us "Mickey Mouse" so at least she recognized him.

This girl learns really fast. At Christmas time, she only wanted to throw away the wrapping paper. But this time she saw the stack of presents and wanted to unwrap them. We had been singing the Happy Birthday Song all day and practiced so that when you asked her how old she was she would tell you 5. She liked the "Happy Turay" song and even blew the candles out one at a time to applause. Adam looked up in the phrase book to see how to say "Happy Birthday" in Bulgarian and we tried to explain to her that it was "Chestita rhazden den." She always smiled, but we don't know if she just thought we sounded silly or if she understood. Grace liked blowing into the party favors and spit through about 4 of them during the party. I'm sure she will finish off the other tomorrow.

She loved her presents: Beanie Baby turtles (in honor of her first English word, "turtle) a fancy sticker book and an Alvin toy, Duplo blocks, a wooden puzzle, a new matchbox car (to replace the car from Dustin that she lost for a couple of days and finally recovered), a play Leap Frog cell phone, and a push popper. She is so expressive, so her facial expressions in the pictures really tell the story. She loved everything from her outfit (she tells us she is beautiful all the time) to blowing out the candles one at a time. She pretended to vacuum with the popper while she was multi-tasking and talking on the cell phone. The cake and ice cream were okay, but she really doesn't love to eat a lot of sweets.

She traded her play phone for Terri's real phone during the party and figured out how to call Penny on her own. Then she babbled on and on in Bulgarian, put her hands on her hips, said "ummmmm," and walked around like Mommy. What a hoot! No, boys, she won't have her own real cell phone at age 10...

After everyone left and Terri almost got stuck in the snow getting out of the driveway, Adam helped Grace build a "structurally sound" building that allowed for the lego man to stand on the balcony. She loves playing with her brothers, but she really didn't seem to care whether the guy fell and crashed down 10 stories. He is made out of plastic, you know...

I hope she has happy memories of her first party.