Happy 4th birthday to my beautiful girl!

Today was J’s 4th birthday. She’s growing up before my eyes and is super excited that she’s now tall enough to go on a roller coaster. Probably not any roller coaster, but big enough for the Scooby Coaster at Movie World (the only one that matters really!)

Today we kept her home from daycare and we went to the movies for the first time. It was wonderful how she was amazed by the simplest things, like the darkness in the cinema and the number of speakers on the walls. Stuff I take for granted that she was seeing with new eyes.

We saw Arthur Christmas, which is a new animated film by Aardman Studios about how Santa manages to deliver all of the presents in just one night. I really enjoyed it, but I think much of it was lost on J. I was impressed that she managed to sit through the whole thing though.

It occurred to me just tonight that the first movie I ever saw at the cinema was ‘Santa Claus: The Movie‘ – funny how things repeat themselves.

Tonight we had P’s family and a couple of J’s friends around for some party food and her cake. I’ve been frustrated with the tendency for kids to have parties every year, so I thought I’d simplify a little. It was fine – big enough for her to feel special without me feeling overwhelmed.

J's 3rd birthday cake

The kids’ cakes are a special thing in our family. P and I like to make them together – it’s a special time for us to take time out together and do something special for the kids. We normally plan carefully and spend a lot of time getting it right. Last year’s cake was something very special – we were just about to move into this house, and J was really excited about having a veggie garden, so we made a veggie garden cake.

J's 4th birthday cake

This year she requested a rainbow cake from one our cake books, so we used up pretty much all the wilton colouring paste in the house, and came up with this. Would you believe that there was more sugar in the icing than there was flour in the cake? I actually ran out of red Wilton paste – anyone who makes cakes would know how much a full bottle of the colouring paste normally stretches. I couldn’t even bring myself to eat a slice.

Didn’t stop little D though – he had 2!