Sydney's birthday (finally...)

So I finally have a few minutes to post about Sydney's birthday. It was on June 12th, which seems forever ago to me now! Our "precious" is now 6 years old - I can hardly believe it. I can remember when she was a newborn and I was teaching her to take a binky! I know everyone always says this, but time really truly does fly by WAY TOO FAST.

Sydney loves Barbies, dressing up (still), coloring and art projects of any kind, reading (she's an excellent reader) and worksheets (yes, for real), and playing just about anything with just about anyone. She has a very active imagination and can come up with a pretend play scenario in any given situation. She loves to make friends and to be around other kids. She is constantly begging to invite friends over. Luckily we have neighbors who are now home during the day for the summer. Many of her friends are boys, despite how very girly she is. She doesn't mind. She's reaching the age where she'll soon be drifting more towards wanting just girl friends, but I think she'll always get along with boys. Sydney is a huge help to me around the house. I trust her to watch the boys from time to time while I'm in the other room taking care of something. She loves to be "motherly", even when I'm sitting 2 feet away. She and her brother, Ethan, can fight like nobody's business, but act like nothing's wrong 5 minutes later.

For Sydney's birthday cake, I made my first attempt at working with fondant. I've been wanting to try it. I was going to make a rolled buttercream, but didn't end up having any spare time to do it, so I just picked up the fondant while I was at the store. It's not very tasty, so I just frosted her cake with buttercream frosting and used the fondant for the decor. While I was making this, Sydney was watching and told me I'm the best mom in the whole world. Now that's nice to hear.

On her birthday morning, Sydney woke up and had her requested bacon and eggs breakfast. Throughout the day we catered to her whims and she was truly a princess. For lunch, she got hot dogs (she asked me to surprise her, so I did, and she came in with a somewhat disappointed tone saying "my surprise is hot dogs?" lol), and then we had her birthday party that afternoon. We invited 11 kids (I know....) and 9 were able to come. I kept it simple - at a park a couple blocks from my house. We'd had a lot of bad weather, but it cleared up for her birthday. It was still cold and windy, though. Boy was it windy!!!

We played a few games: duck duck goose, red rover, sack races and pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. Then the kids played around on the playground for a few minutes before doing the cake and ice cream thing.

It was so windy we couldn't even light the candles! So we just sang to her. :) I'm sure her wish will still come true.

All of the kids were excited to give their gifts. Sydney, thriving on the attention, immediately switched into "princess" mode and made rules for who could give her their gift and when. (sigh)

She ended up with some good loot and then we did the pinata. fun for everyone. It was nice to see the sun come out just as the party was winding down. (another sigh) But fortunately these are 6-year-old kids who just want to play and they didn't mind the weather much.

For dinner, Sydney requested "El Toro", a local Mexican restaurant. She loves "mexico food", i.e. beans and chips.

They brought her some sopapillas and sang happy birthday to her. I wonder how many heads that hat has been on....

Sydney wasn't the only one enjoying herself that day.