Always somewhere...: Katie's sixth birthday

And now we have...September. Two more birthdays coming up, so I thought I'd better blog about Katie's, first, which was at the end of July!

We very often remember to take a photo of the birthday child the day before his or her birthday, holding up the number of fingers they "still are", then one the next day with the new number. Jacob's birthday was first, and it's hard to hold up either 11 or 12 fingers. Then came Elisabeth's, who wasn't willing to hold up one finger for the camera, either. The day before Lukas's birthday he got (ahem...) sent to bed early and I forgot to take a photo. So I figure that the tradition just doesn't have to happen this year, and we didn't get a photo of Katie holding up five fingers. However, on the morning of her birthday, she suddenly remembered and requested a photo of herself with six fingers. Only when I uploaded the photos to the computer did I notice that her hair hadn't been brushed yet...

Katie is very into all things Pink and all things Princess, so requested a "pin-the-tiara-on-the-princess" game at her party. I traced her and she colored herself in, as a princess.

For her cake she wanted a tiara. Not a crown, a tiara. She explained the difference to me, that on a tiara, the sides of the points swoop. I thought maybe I hadn't swooped them quite enough, but she was pleased with the cake, even if everyone else did think it was a crown. The background, incidentally, which looks purple in this photo, was actually pink, colored with homemade strawberry jam, which was yummy and I'll happily do again.

As the children arrived, they were given two tiaras each to color--one on cardboard (the back of cereal boxes) to wear, and one for taping on the princess later on. Here is the princess with her choice of tiaras.

Katie wearing her crown (I mean...tiara...although the sides don't swoop enough...), holding the plant that Lukas gave her.

Considering that there were 14 children in the house (two families total...her guests consisted of one family with eight children, and one family of adults, plus of course the eight of us and one houseguest), and that this was Katie's birthday, they played some amazingly quiet games. I think this was when they were playing a sleeping game, something I was more than happy to encourage!

Opening her gift from my parents, a little Guatemalen purse.

A book I love and have given to many six-year-olds over the years, "Now We are Six" by A.A. Milne. (We now have three copies in the house, as Marie, Katie, and I each have our own copies. Since neither Jacob nor Lukas could read when they were six, I guess that's why it didn't occur to me to give them their own copies...)

We picked up these wedding crowns months ago at the thrift store for a couple of Euros. Apparently, they're traditionally used for the bridal couple in Cypriot weddings and can cost at least 20 or 30 times what we paid. The two circlets were originally joined by a long ribbon, but we cut them apart.