09.10.11 - Madeline's Birthday

 Today is Madeline's 3rd birthday.  I started the morning with presents! I just couldn't WAIT for her to open her gifts.  I did let her sleep in until she was ready to get up, but as soon as she woke up the only thing I let her do before opening her presents was go to the bathroom. 

We got Madeline some Disney Princess Barbies when on repat and for her birthday we gave her the Cinderella and Prince Charming set.  She also got a rockin' pink scooter and, of course, her jumpolene. 

 Our good friends F and B came over and brought yummy waffles and a certain breakfast meat that is not available where we currently live and is a hot commodity.  They also brought Mads a nice present - her own game of Candy Land!  I am SO excited to play it with her.  I remember playing it as a kid.  F and B spent the entire morning with us playing and eating and just having fun.  It was a great start to our day. 

 I made this lovely birthday banner in photoshop and hung it on the wall.  Madeline had a good time telling me what the letters were.  I said, "what do these letters spell?" and she said, "Happy Birthday Madeline Olivia have a great day!"

 Madeline and Benjy have a good time together.  Here they are being cute on the couch right before she opened her present from him.

 Here they are huggin'.

 And just to take some of the spotlight away from Mads, Abigail is now crawling.  She only goes about two or three crawls and then collapses, and she is a little wobbly, but I can confidently say she is a crawler now. I am SO proud of her. 

 After our friends left, I made a cake.  Madeline said she wanted pink and purple inside and purple outside.  It was not my best cake.  The cake itself tasted like sweet playdough (at least to me) and the frosting... uggh.  I tried to make a cream cheese frosting and it would not thicken to a frosting-like consistency.  It sort of just stayed gel like and creamy.  So I used that as filling between the layers.  Then I tried to make a butter cream frosting for decorating and I think I added too much vanilla cause it wasn't that great.  Madeline told me she thought it was great though.  She kept telling me I did a "good job."  So I guess that's all that matters. 

We put some red lipstick on and then bought Madeline a new app on my iPad.  She loves my iPad and whenever I get it out she wants to play a game.  So, within reason, we let her once in a while.  For her birthday I bought her an app that is a game for a show she likes on PBS called Super Why.  It is a good app and I think it was worth the money.  It test her knowledge of letters, rhyming, word shapes, and she can actually trace the letters with her finger to learn how to write it.  A+!

We had rubbery Pizza Hut pizza for dinner - a request from Madeline (funny thing, she had like three bites and was done) and then we sang, blew out candles, and had some cake and sorbet (the latest craze at our house). 

 Here is Madeline blowing out her candles.  She did a great job! Paul helped a little so I re-lit one candle and let Madeline finish the job proper. 

 Pink and purple cake with raspberry sorbet... sort of Mmmmm. 

 Then it was time to play some more.  Madeline had a good time playing on her new scooter and we played with her balloons. She got to talk to her Grandparents on the phone and we watched a movie to close out the night. 

This year we got Mads 48 balloons!  It was lots of fun.

Happy Birthday to our sweet Madeline.  We love you SOOOOOOOO much!!