7-year old, continued

Genevieve is the bounciest kid I've ever seen. Trying to read a book to her is like trying to pin down Tigger. (It seems like she's totally not paying attention, but oddly enough she always does get the full story, can answer complex questions about it and comes up with interesting connections...go figure!) So what do you suppose we got her for her birthday? She immediately started doing tricks on it, of course. Before I could even tell her not to attempt certain things, she was doing expert flips. She's learned a lot in gymnastics over the past year. This summer she'll be going to gymnastics camp for 5 weeks. That should be fun!

One of her teachers told me that she asked her what she got for her birthday the next day. She didn't mention the trampoline or anything else from the pile of gifts. She replied, "my brother gave me the biggest smile!"

This year I told Genevieve that we couldn't have her birthday party at our house because of the kitchen renovation project. We have always done it at home and had a ton of kids running around in the backyard. She was disappointed, and we had a hard time coming up with a venue that we both liked. Finally we settled on Sweet & Sassy, where the girls all got updos, nail polish, makeup and costumes, plus dancing. At first Genevieve wanted a princess party, but then she changed her mind to "fashion diva"... In the end half the girls wore princess dresses and half wore "high fashion" ones. A few of the girls opted for "princess" hairdos, but most went for the "rock star" look (which was pretty funny with the princess dresses). They had a blast.

I always make a fun cake of some kind for parties. When we were thinking princesses, we were going to try to make a castle cake or maybe a doll cake. Then Genevieve looked through my books and found a treasure chest. So that's what we did. It came out pretty cool, and it was actually one of the easiest ones I've ever done. The girls of course went wild for it because they all got candy with their slice of cake. I even thought to bring extra ring pops so everyone could have one.

Overall it was a smashing success!