Happy Birthday, Kya!

My beautiful, crazy, red-head, Kya, turned 7 last week. She is growing up so fast, and I mean that quite literally. She is catching up pretty quickly to September in height and I think they're closer than they've ever been. My prediction is that she'll pass her up in the next year or two. But anyway, back to the point. We had fun celebrating her birthday which ended up happening over 4 different days which I don't think she seemed to mind. The Saturday before, my parents celebrated with her while they babysit the kids while I was at my friend's funeral. Then the next day we celebrated over at Cluff's after Sunday dinner. She got a chihuahua Webkinz from her Uncle Ben and Aunt Shannon that she was SOOOO excited about. Her and September are both into Webkinz big-time right now.

On her birthday I went to her school for her spotlight thing. She was supposed to have done it a couple days earlier, but I had been so busy with various things that I didn't get a chance to work on her poster until the day before and when I went to get the pictures printed to put on her poster the machines were down at 2 different stores. So I asked her teacher if I could do it a different day and it worked out to do it ON her birthday which I think made her feel that much more special that day. She did a great job of presenting it to her class by herself. It's always interesting to me to see my children in a school setting because you always wonder how differently your child acts at school versus home. It's amazing to see how far Kya has come since last year. She had a rough time in kindergarten for reasons that I will choose not to go into on a public blog. But she has suddenly blossomed into little miss popular this year and has more friends than I can count. I have friends parents telling me all the time about how their daughter is always talking about Kya and what a great friend she is and how funny she is. And Kya comes home constantly with little notes from friends saying the same types of things, and little pieces of paper with friends phone #'s. It makes me so happy to see how many friends she has made. Her confidence has grown so much this year and just thinking about that makes me tear up a little and make my heart feel like it's going to burst!


After school we surprised her with a few things. Matthew left work early and as soon as she got home he took her on a scooter ride to go pick out a movie for that night, while September and I stayed home and finished decorating her room (which September had already gotten up early and partly done that morning....she cracks me up!). We blew up a bunch of little balloons and put them all over her bed which had her new quilt on it that I FINALLY finished after starting it 4 1/2 years ago!!! (The funny thing is, I don't even like it all that much. Back when I started it it matched the look and style I was going for in the girls room. But now, not so much. But I had already finished September's, and I was so close to finishing Kya's that there was no way I wasn't going to finish it and at least let her use it for a year or two.) When she got home and we let her in her room she didn't even notice the quilt. She just got excited about the balloons and gift on her bed. It made me absolutely feel like those last 7 or 8 hours I had frantically spent finishing the quilt was all worth it!! I got over it. I try not to get offended by things like that with Kya anymore. It's not that she's ungrateful, that's just how Kya is. She can be completely oblivious, but once we pointed it out to her she was very grateful. She was also very excited about her gift...we got her Super Mario Kart for the Wii. Although it has been Logan that has gotten the most use out of it. Perhaps it would've been a more appropriate gift for him instead.


We only let the kids have big parties where they invite multiple friends on certain years, and on the other years we let them choose a fun place to go and they get to invite one friend. She wanted to go to Chuck E Cheese, but we wanted to wait and do it the next day so we could go earlier in the day. But we still wanted do something ON her birthday, so we let her invite her friend over for pizza and a movie. We actually ended up with two friends coming over.....one was actually September's best friend, who is the sister of the friend Kya invited. We let them both come because that's pretty much how it works with those 4. They're a package deal! Ariel and Courtney practically live at our house and vice-versa.

Ariel & Courtney spoiled her with lots of gifts.

The Party Crew - Ariel, September, Peyton, Kya and Courtney

The next day at Chuck E Cheese it was a little crazy. The weather was yucky (it was pouring rain when we left!) and apparently everybody else had the same idea as us that Chuck E Cheese would be a fun place to go on a rainy Saturday afternoon. I've never seen it so packed! But the kids managed to make it onto some rides and squeeze in some games. September and Ariel were so focused on earning as many tickets as they could so they could get some AMAZING prizes! That is one of the things I HATE about places like that. The stupid prizes that you can buy with the tickets you've earned. It cost probably $5 in tokens to earn enough tickets to buy a lollipop. It's ridiculous! I mean, sure it's great that you at least get SOMETHING out of it. But I'd rather just have them focus on having fun. But that's my perspective. And theirs.....well, they did have fun, so whatever I guess! ;) One thing that I spotted at the last minute that I thought was pretty cool was this "sketching" machine. You sit down and it takes your pictures and then the machine turns it into a sketching and prints it out for you. It's only 1 token just like everything else. So I did one with Peyton and she was being so funny and smiling away until a half second before it finally took the picture when she decided to bolt. But then I had Matthew do it with me and we now have a lovely sketched drawing of the two of us hanging on the fridge. I'm such a dork! But hey, it's not that often that we have any sort of pictures of the two of us, so I thought it was great.

Logan loved this ride, but Peyton was terrified and pretty much screamed bloody-murder the entire time.

This is Kya's favorite ride there. This was new to the location we went to so she was very excited to see it there.

After being scared of it initially, Peyton eventually "claimed" this ride and spent the majority of her time in it. Every time we'd take her out of it and she saw another kid get in she would get very upset. And when she managed to sneak away from us when we turned our backs for two seconds, we could always find her in it. You can't tell too well in the picture, but she has her face smashed against the windshield. It looked hilarious!!