Luau Birthday Party

After being back in Phoenix for a whole year I heard of many fun locations to do birthday parties, bowling, gymnastics, and on and on, and yet still Rachel really wanted to just have a pool party.  I was getting de ja vue of her 5th birthday party so we tried to get a little creative and decided to make it a luau themed party.   A big thank you goes out to the Dollar tree store for the grass skirts, leis and even the bamboo limbo stick. 

 Here I am documenting that Rachel had a pinata.  I soooo do not love pinatas, but it became very clear to me that her childhood would always be incomplete if she never got a pinata at a birthday party.  So I caved in and got one--knowing I could cross that off the list and be done with it :) 

Limbo

She had several friends from school, and a few from her soccer team, and her cousins. 

For her cake this year we did an ice cream cake that looked like a watermelon made out of sherbert. 

Cali even got to play for a bit

Then we had hula-hooping contests

Birthday outfit on her real birthday.

Rachel has grown up to be an amazing, entertaining, smart, kind, friendly, creative and thoughtful girl.  I love hearing the things she comes up with, and I love watching her do the things she loves.  She seems to have a knack for gymnastics and always has a perma-grin during all of her lessons.  Gymnastics was only once a week but I think every other day of the week she still had her leotard on and was doing gymnastics in our front room.  She also played soccer this year, it seemed to be more of a challenge, it was 3 days a week and she had a tough coach this year who pushed them pretty hard, but despite the hard times she still enjoyed it.  There were times she was crying and I would wonder if maybe this wasn't her sport (sometimes because she was tired, or because someone was pushing, or sometimes because the shin guards were uncomfortable)  and then other times like when she took a ball to the face during a game and didn't even flinch and just kept going, but when I would ask her if she still liked soccer she would say yes and she can't wait to play next year.    Her teacher worked a lot with trying to teach responsibility this year and I feel like Rachel figured this out pretty well.  I rarely had to remind her of homework, she would be reminding me of when her projects were due, and would bring her books home before a test.  She doesn't get perfect scores but does well and I am really impressed with her independance.   Speaking of independance she was also very independant in getting up every morning and getting ready for school this year.  She would have her clothes picked out the night before, then she would set her alarm for 6:30am, then she would wake up, get dressed and then come in and snuggle with me while I was trying to wake up and drag my sleepy self out of bed.  I would like to say I was bright-eyed and cheery every morning and had a yummy breakfast waiting for her, but the truth is that she would be the one who would come wake me up, and we would snuggle until about 7am when Sam and I would finally get out of bed, I am glad this year she still liked to snuggle.  If I ever got up early and she wasn't able to snuggle in the morning she was not very happy--so I had an extra excuse to just lay in bed and be lazy since I knew how much she enjoyed it.  She spent a lot of time missing Chinle this year, but she finally settled in here and was sad to say good-bye to 3rd grade.  She actually said she was sad the last day was a half-day --she wished it was a full-day because now that it is over she misses all her friends.   I am so lucky to be her mom and I can't wait to see her continue to grow up and the person she turns into.

 Pics with the birthday girl

Mother-Daughter Pedicures

My birthday and Rachel's birthday are a week apart and when she was little I would think about all the fun stuff we could do together when she grew up to celebrate our birthdays--like go to the salon together, or get manicures or pedicures. One of her closest friends also has a birthday in May and so does her mom, and they had started the tradition of going to get pedicures every year and they invited us to come--and we had a blast.   Rachel was smiling every time I looked over at her, and we all splurged and got fancy designs on our toes since it was such a special occasion.