They say it's your birthday...

Look who had a birthday!.  Addie turned 9 in July while we were staying with Valerie and so many of her cousins were around .  Have I mentioned how happy I am that my kids have been able to have so much cousin time this summer.  So many memories have been made.  

She requested Scandinavian fruit soup and monkey bread for breakfast.  Yummy 

Anyone who knows Addie, knows how much she loves animals and nature and bugs.  She LOVES the show Wild Kratts which is all about animals so I decided to give her a Wild Kratts birthday party.  I made them all "creature power suits" with "creature power disks" and they had challenges to get their disks.  For kinda being thrown together last minute, it turned out pretty good.  

"CREATURE POWER"

For the Butterfly disk, they took turns wrapping each other up like caterpillars and then they had to break out of their cocoon and become butterflies.  Who wouldn't want to toilet paper their cousin right?  They had fun 

I must not have taken a picture of the 2nd game/challenge but it was for their cheetah disk and they all had "tails" (or Ammon's socks) sticking out the back of their pants and they had to try to pull other cheetahs tails out without getting their own tail pulled.  They were really good but poor Addie was jumping on the trampoline about 30 min before the party started and landed on her foot wrong and slightly sprained her ankle so she couldn't really run for the game but she did really well with the game anyway.

The 3rd challenge was a Polar Bear Challenge.  I was going to take all the kids to go ice-blocking but I surprisingly could not find any hills in Spanish Fork to do it on except on the golf course drive range and I didn't really think they would let me take over that so we improvised and I bought a slip-n-slide and the kids brought their swim suits.  Unfortunatly it started to get windy and rainy right about that time but the kids all got a few good runs on the slide and then it was time for the non-cake.

All growing up, my mom always did special cakes for us, depending on what was going on in our lives at the time.  For example when I got my ears pierced for my birthday, she made a cake in the shape of giant ears with some earrings in them. One year she made my sister who had just come home from Germany a cake of the Neucshwanstein Castle.  Anyway, the bar is set high.  I have always tried to do special cakes for my kids because I loved it so much growing up. Well the morning of Addies birthday, we ran to the store to grab some stuff for her party and I was still trying to figure out what kind of cake to make her.  On the way she just mentioned she didn't really like cake.  I told her since this was her birthday, she could have whatever dessert she wanted.  She finally decided on "dirt" which is crushed up oreos over ice-cream with a couple gummy worms thrown in.  PERFECT!  It went great with the theme and I cannot even express how much less stress I felt.  Part of me thought I should give her a cake because its the tradition but the wiser part of me realized it did not need to be and things would be great without.  So much less stress makes a much happier mommy! SO DIRT IT IS!

I really cannot believe how grown up this girl is getting.  She can be the sweetest, most helpful and creative girl I know.  She has such a funny personality and loves to make people laugh.  I love the way her mind works and how her mouth has to speak so fast to try to keep up with her brain.  I bet I tell her 10 times a day to slow down so we can actually understand what she is saying but that enthusiasm for life is very catching. I love how kind and loving she is and what a good helper she is with Jarom.  I don't know what our family would do without her.  We love you Addie Mae