Kassidy's Birthday Party

We celebrated Kassidy's birthday on May 6th, when cousins were with their parents so the kids could play together.  Where it is only Kassidy's third birthday we just planned to have a laid back family birthday party.  However, we somehow gave ourselves a lot of projects to do  in order to be ready for the party on Saturday...

The main project that comes with any of the kids' birthdays is making a cake.  Kassidy decided WEEKS ago that she would have a triceratops cake, and there was no changing her mind however I might try.  I finally decided that making a triceratops silhouette would be acceptable.  Then, because I seem to try something brand new with every cake, I made marshmallow fondant for the first time and made dinosaurs out of the fondant.  These are a few of her most commonly talked about dinosaurs.

The main dinosaur would of course be the triceratops.  I also played with a new cake decorating tip that my parents got me and that is what made all the orange stars.  Kassidy picked out the pink and blue beads and decided she wanted white frosting, but a rainbow of colors, which gives some insight into the seemingly random colors chosen.

 Here is her Eudimorphodon on the side of the cake.

 And the Tyrannosaurus Rex on the back side of the cake.

 I didn't have room for the Apatosaurus.  Here is my overly large triceratops down the side of the cake.  I actually liked him going off the side like this, even if it wasn't intentionally done that way to start with.

I was pretty pleased with how the cake turned out.  It was rainbow chip inside (per Kassidy's request) with strawberry and cream cheese filling.

The other big project we had that I didn't take pictures of was that we decided it would be fun to set up our downstairs family room with the surround sound system and projector and watch a movie for Kassidy's birthday.  Since she loves dinosaurs, we watched The Good Dinosaur, and ate Papa Murphy's pizzas (her favorite food).  This was a much bigger project than we gave ourselves time to accomplish and Papa Bennett and Steve put in a lot of hours Friday night and Saturday to get it done.  However, listening to all the kids giggle together, and sitting on our used sectional we recently got for that space while looking at a room full of family watching a movie in OUR basement - an awesome moment for me today...

After the movie and pizza we came upstairs to open presents.  Here is our birthday Triceratops excitedly running around with her balloons and happily wearing her "dinosaur skeleton" shirt.

 We got her some more shirts that weren't hand-me-downs and fit her interests right now.  We had her open those first, knowing they wouldn't be very exciting further into the gifts...

 Here she was excited about a new dinosaur book from Grandma and Papa Rose.  She got comfy and had to flip through the book before she moved on to more gifts.

 She gained a beautiful bow from Aunt Julie's gift and as soon as she saw it said "Ok, let's go." and tried to open the box.  However, it was getting late so we were shoving gifts at her and kept her opening presents.

 Steve and I got her a stick pony and she was excited and announced "I have a pony princess!" which is a favorite phrase of hers from Storybots Silly Songs.

 One of her favorite things was this little train set from Grandma and Papa Bennett with Dinosaur Train characters.

 I made her wait till the end to open the last few gifts, knowing we probably wouldn't get her back after she saw them.  First, her new stuffed triceratops from Grandma and Papa Rose.  A triceratops is the only answer she would give us when we asked what she wanted for her birthday, so we knew she would be excited.

 Next came this project of mine.  I saw a wall decal on amazon that was a little girl leading a triceratops.  It was so perfectly Kassidy - who will introduce herself as Triceratops to people.  But it was black and boring.  Then I saw this great rainbow watercolor of a triceratops on etsy.  I wanted to combine the ideas, but wasn't sure I could pull it off.  Some visits to the craft store, calls for advice to my sister Jennifer who paints with watercolors, and a LOT of hours and self-doubt later, I was really pleased with how her picture turned out.  It so captures Kassidy at 3 for me right now, and I hope she loves it for a long time and understands that it was a gift of labor and love, which makes it my favorite gift I've given her, because there's a bit of me in it.

Her last gift was the giant rainbow triceratops my parents got her, and she immediately started playing with the two triceratops together - almost like we discussed she would.

Don't you love when you inadvertently coordinate gifts?  So here is our little ginger with her rainbow triceratops next to the picture of the little ginger girl leading her rainbow triceratops!

After presents we got right on to cake as it was way later than we had originally planned for.  Kassidy held her two triceratops the whole time and happily started the birthday song to herself again.

 She did pretty well blowing out candles one at a time, even if Steve had to lift her chin so she stopped blowing under the third candle.

And that wrapped up our party.  All in all, I think it was a big success for our little dino-lover.  Kassidy tries our patience, but she is also so spunky, hilarious, and loving.  She is exceptionally bright and I love her original and creative way of looking at things.  We sure love our little Triceratops!  Happy birthday, Kass!