Birthday girl, take two

Family party at Aunt Cindy's! Thanks Aunt Cindy & Uncle Keith!

Awesome birthday cake made by Aunt Barb! Thanks, Aunt Barb!
Fun party! Thanks to everyone who made it! =)

Brittany was running Aunt Barb's camera (if I caught what they were saying correctly). She caught some funny shots, like this one of Amanda smushing her nose (followed by a "nice" picture of us).

She was running out of real smiles, so I threatened to tickle her. Our game is: I say, "Raise your hand if you like chocolate!" (or something similar) and then try to grab a quick underarm tickle while she tries to put her hand in the air and back down again really fast to avoid the tickle. Kind of a fun little game, and I thought it was fun that Britt caught this picture.

Cindy got out the party hats, and almost everyone was caught on camera with a hat.

No pics of Keith with a hat (sorry, Keith!) and Brandon showed up later, post-hat moment (I think). Cindy was busy in the last party hat picture, scribing the list of presents, keeping track for me so we could work on thank yous (almost done!).

I thought these were cute pics. Amanda was trying on her new Christmas dress from Aunt Cheryl in the picture with Abby.

We had Valentino's pizza for lunch (yum! Thanks, Keith & Cindy!), cake and ice cream for the party, and BBQ burgers for supper (ditto!), then everyone else went home and Uncle Keith helped me put training wheels on her bike, which I'd brought along. (Cindy helped a bit before heading off to help out at church). She's pretty good with her balance bike, but that doesn't give her any pedalling experience, which affects steering, so she has a ways to go before she can actually ride a bike, plus she's small for her bike. But, with the training wheels, she was doing pretty well. She took one spill which scraped her knee, and hurt her ring finger on her left hand, although it took me awhile to figure that out. Sunday night, she said her finger hurt, but when I looked for a scratch she said it hurt on the inside. I thought she was being silly, but did give her a band-aid. Well, Monday after school, I found that her finger was very swollen! Then I figured out what she meant....bad mom! I called my pediatrician's nurse and she said she's probably ok (could move it, etc.) but I could give her motrin and ice it, so we did that awhile. The nurse's aid at school also checked it and said she was ok (although it's still a bit swollen a week later - is that normal?)

The day after her birthday, I was going to work on getting my house somewhat in order (being gone so many weekends in July and August took its toll!), but my Aunt Ardith (my mom's sister) and Uncle Gene called to say they were coming to Omaha to check out the new pedestrian bridge going from Omaha to Council Bluffs, IA. I volunteered our services as guides to help them find their way downtown, and they agreed to take us along. Much more fun than cleaning! The picture of Ardith and Gene below has them standing on the etched state line in the middle of the river.

The fountain is at the end of the Omaha side of the bridge, and Amanda had fun playing in that for a little while. I brought along a towel so we didn't make a mess in Ardith & Gene's car. Then I volunteered us to go along on Gene's shopping trip to Cabela's. I can't do justice describing what Cabela's is, so you might want to check out this link if you're unfamiliar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabela

They have so many taxidermied animals, it was neat to be able to show Amanda what a real badger/beaver/skunk, etc. looks like. The only downside was that they were so real that she kept asking if an animal was alive, and I would try to explain, no, but it looks like it's alive. It's dead but it's stuffed...well, not really stuffed (gives stuffed animals a whole different twist for a kid). Yep, I really sounded that coherent on the topic.

I should have taken a picture of the mountain display of taxidermied animals, but here are the pics I and Aunt Ardith took. The first is Amanda showing no fear at handling a fox fur (or was this one coyote?), and the second is us hanging out in one of the vehicles. It was a fun afternoon with the folks from Humphrey! =)


This is time out of time, but here are pics of Amanda helping make cookies to take to school for her birthday treats. I know cupcakes are usual, but they're always so messy and I thought we could dress up some snickerdoodles with a little frosting and some sprinkles, and she could help. It went pretty well, although I had to fight like mad with my type A personality to keep from trying to help her, especially when she took my round cookie balls and while trying to roll them in the sugar and cinnamon, proceeded to smush them totally out of shape. I'd reach over to instruct her and stop and repeat in my head, "IT DOESN'T MATTER. THEY DON'T HAVE TO BE ROUND!" I think I mostly succeeded in not making it a stressful time (for her - not for me).

Finished product, ready to take to school the next morning: