Claire's birthday

I thought having a quiet birthday at home would be no trouble, but it was more work than I thought! I wanted to make it special so I decorated our dining area, made a birthday cake and picked roses from our backyard for the table. I decided to go with a Dora theme since I already had some leftover party supplies from Olivia's 3rd birthday which was a Dora theme.

When their dad got home, we started making pizzas. The girls love to make pizzas. I buy the dough, sauce, cheese and pepperoni (for mom and dad) at Trader Joe's. Gotta love Trader Joe's! They love to roll out the dough (with a little help), spread the sauce and sprinkle...and eat..the cheese.

While the pizzas were cooking, I had them do an activity. It's an ice sculpture I saw from a television show. I froze water in a half gallon milk carton and had Olivia help me get it out and stand it up in a container. Then we filled 4 paper cups with colored water and had medicine droppers to use. Next, I filled a bowl with rock salt. So, I had them add rock salt to the top of the block of ice. Then they started dropping the colored water on top. It was really fun to watch the block of ice transform. The rock salt caused the ice to melt quickly and the colored water ran down the cracks. They loved it. It was a bit messy, I should have put art shirts on them, but the colors came right out of their clothes.

It was a great activity to keep them occupied while the pizzas were cooking. So then we had pizza for dinner with lemonade. After dinner, I brought out the cake I made and decorated. (Disclaimer: I do not claim to be a cake baker nor decorator and actually, I suck at it) I put a Dora and boots on top of the cake which were actually Olivia's toys...but I don't think Claire cared! After she blew out the candles and ate her cake, she opened her gifts. We got her more gifts than normal since she didn't really have a 'party'. Some of the gifts are more appropriate for Olivia, but hopefully it will get them sharing better.

I've been trying to upload pictures from her birthday for about 2 days so I'll have to post the pictures another time...sorry!