Happy Birthday Sydney!

Just before finally crawling into bed around 3:30am Friday morning, Spencer got Sydney's binky out of her bed and I replaced it with a present from the "binky fairy." We woke up at about 4:30am to Sydney crying. Spencer went in to help her, and she was crying because she couldn't find her bink. I went in and told her the binky fairy came and showed her the present sitting on her night stand. She opened it and was really excited about her new blanket and teddy bear, and went right back to sleep. Phew!

Sydney requested a Pinkalicious birthday party with a cat cake, so we woke up early this morning to sneak in some last minute preparations (i.e. things we were too tired to do last night) before her friends arrived. As Shawn was ready to eat about 30 minutes into the party, I had to rely heavily on Spencer to pull this off. Thank goodness he took the day off- he was a champion! I was also grateful to have our sweet neighbors Louise and Ann Marie there to help entertain Shawn and help with the kids.

The girls started off by making pink bracelets.

Emmy

Audra

Taylor

Jasmin

Mia & Bella

Then they headed outside for a scavenger hunt to find a treasure box filled with star wands that look like the one Pinkalicious has in the book.

Next they ate pink treats while I read Pinkalicious. I spent a decent amount of time last night making pink treats, but it turned out that the store bought frosted animal crackers were the clear favorite. Then they decorated pre-frosted "pink" cupcakes (I use quotations as they were actually orange since we added red food coloring to a yellow cake mix... oops!). I knew this activity would be messy, but I didn't anticipate just how messy it would get.

While Sydney opened presents and I fed Shawn, Louise swept about a billion pink sprinkles off of our floor. Then we all gathered around the cake and sang Happy Birthday.

Again, I baked and frosted this cake after we got home from the Marine Ball the night before, so it was pretty late when I was finally getting it finished. Just as I was getting ready to clean out my dark pink frosting bag, I realized I had actually written "Happy Birthay Sydney." Blast. Thankfully I was able to scrape off the "ay" and fix it.

Happy Birthday Sydney!

Did it all by herself this year :)

At her request, we served the cake with green ice cream. My kind of girl.

Shawn, wearing size 6 month pants! Chunk!!

After the party, Syd opened a few more presents from Grandparents. With all of her presents, she amassed a large amount of art supplies, books, and Play-doh... lots to keep us busy!

Several weeks ago, Sydney asked if we could ride the ferris wheel in American Village. We can see it from our house and drive by it pretty frequently. We told her we could ride it on her birthday, so off we went!

It went pretty slowly, taking about 15 minutes to go around once. Spencer's not a fan of heights, and even I got a little nervous at how windy it was at the top.

After our ride, we headed over to Camp Foster to try to get into the free Sesame Street Live show, but learned when we got there that it was actually on Kadena! We thought for sure we would be too late as traffic into Kadena was terrible. We considered just forgetting about the whole thing, but eventually decided it was still worth a shot. We pulled in about 20 minutes before the show, and thankfully the line outside didn't look too long. Spencer dropped me off to stand in line while he found parking, and when I got there I asked the people in front of me if we needed tickets for the show. They said yes, but just then one of the volunteers was walking by and asked me if I needed tickets. I said yes and he said, "How many?" Next thing I knew I had 3 tickets in my hand. I was so excited it worked out!

Sydney informed me that she did not like the purple guy.

The show was cute and they sang some fun songs, but highlight of the whole thing was definitely the cool Elmo spinners they passed out before the show.

Afterwards we went out for some udon and tempura, then came back home to play outside for a bit before watching Tangled.

During the movie Syd opened a few presents from me and Spencer (I probably should have just saved some of them for Christmas gifts), then it was off to bed. What a crazy and fun-filled day! I was relieved that Syd didn't even cry about not having her bink when she went to bed, although she did ask about it several times. Just as I suspected, she would not take a nap yesterday. And somehow with no nap, she still comes into our room at like 6:30 am every morning. What's up with that?

Marine Ball

On Thursday night, Spencer and I attended one of many Marine Balls taking place this month to commemorate the 236th birthday of the Marine Corp. There was a bit of drama in our preparations. The attire for Spencer's Dental Corp was dress whites, so he got his uniform dry cleaned and bought all his extra pins and such to show he's a Lieutenant instead of an Ensign. Well, he called me after a meeting he had on Wednesday, and when I said, "How's you're day going?" his response was, "Terrible. I just found out they changed the uniform for the ball tomorrow to dress blues." He was given the rest of the day off to run around to get his uniform ready- he had to beg a tailor (and give a heavy tip!) to do a rush job to sew an extra strip on his sleeves, had to pay for an express dry cleaning, and had to run around to buy the medals and pins he needed. What a pain! Thankfully he was able to get it all taken care of.

Our sweet neighbor Jess watched our kids for us (we watched theirs last week when they went to the Navy ball). This was our first date since Shawn was born.

The ceremony was full of tradition- standing for colors and the National Anthem, playing of the Marine Hymn, bringing in the ginormous cake, the first piece of cake being passed from the oldest to the youngest Marine in the room.

The 3rd Dental Battalion.

It was neat to be part of this event, and fun to get to know people from Spencer's work a little better. We stuck around to dance to a few songs- I basically forced him to the dance floor when Don't Stop Believing Came On, and made him stay for Moves Like Jagger (I can't get enough of Maroon 5 lately). Then we headed home for a LONG night of birthday party preparations. We were up until 3am!