I can’t believe my baby girl is four!! Tissues please?!!! Emma’s birthday was Thursday and we celebrated all weekend long! Emma is sweet, super smart, and knows what she likes. She loves Paw patrol, PJ masks, and Lion King. In fact that is what she wanted for her birthday was a lion king party. She also wanted to dress up as little Simba for Halloween! 🙂 So we had her birthday party on Halloween, and she wore her costume during her party. So cute! 🙂

On Emma’s special day we celebrated by going to the bookstore, and letting her pick out a book! We went to lunch and then we took her to the ice cream shop. Where she was able to pick out a flavor of ice cream of her choice. She chose Lemon Custard! I think she wanted it because it was yellow, and that is her favorite color, but she said she loved the taste.

On Halloween we had Emma’s party with grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins! It was a beautiful day and the kids were able to play outside. We had a safari scavenger hunt. My dad hid stuffed animals all over the yard for the kids to find, and then he offered a prize to the who could find the tiger. I love my Dad! 🙂

Emma had requested pizza for her party. So I created a lion king pizza party and cake! We had Simba tails, Rafiki fruit, jungle animals, circle of life pizza, and sunrise punch! I also made a strawberry birthday cake with cream cheese frosting. The cake decorating didn’t turn out as I had planned, so I had to go to plan B. I ordered an edible Lion King cake topper, but it was packaged improperly and I couldn’t get it to peel off. It just shredded! I was so upset! I ended up decorating the edges and side of the cake. Andrew wrote on the cake. He used to work in a deli a long time ago, and he learned how to write on cakes! He did mess up a little on her name, but overall he did a great job! I was impressed! I hate writing on cakes! Then I remembered that Emma had these little lion king figure toys, and so I used those as decorative toppers! Overall, I think plan B turned out pretty good.

Emma loved all her gifts! She REALLY loves her Paw Patrol Bicycle! She can now, “keep up with David”, as she says. 🙂

Andrew and my parents helped so much with getting everything ready for Emma’s party! Mom helped with the decorations, Andrew put Emma’s bicycle together, and Dad entertained the kids outside while we were busy as bees getting everything ready! I am so thankful for all their help!

Since it was Halloween, we celebrated that evening with ghost cookies, graveyard pudding, hot dogs, and chili! My parents bought me a fire pit for my birthday (It was a belated gift). 🙂 Andrew started a fire, and we roasted hot dogs! It was such a wonderful evening for it…not too cold! We had such a fun evening! The ghost cookies were Nutter Butter cookies dipped in white chocolate with candy eyeballs. 🙂 I had made some instant chocolate pudding and had toppings set out such as crushed cookies, gummy worms, and festive sprinkles. 🙂

(The kids dressed up in their costumes last weekend to do a drive through trunk or treat at the church. Samuel’s Curious George costume has now been worn by all three of our children! I love that! 🙂 )

In the midst of Birthdays and Halloween parties, my piano students had a Halloween piano recital! It was so fun! Almost everyone dressed up in their costumes, and I dressed up as Mary Poppins! 🙂 It was David’s first piano recital too! He did awesome, and dressed up in his Charmander costume. I was proud of all my students!

Earlier in the week the kids and I made Halloween sugar cookies! I think I found my new favorite sugar cookie recipe! It is almost identical to the one I’ve used before, but I learned a better way of rolling out the dough! Sally’s Best Sugar Cookie Recipe is the one I used, and I learned to roll the dough out between two pieces of wax paper, refrigerate, peel the wax paper off the top, and then cut out the cookies! Maybe the rest of the world already knows this, but I didn’t! I mixed up some Halloween colored frosting using Lil Luna’s sugar cookie frosting recipe. I really like this frosting recipe! It’s super easy, you don’t have to mess with egg whites, and it taste great! Besides, when the kids are decorating, precision frosting is not required! 🙂

Hope you had a Happy Halloween!

Love,

PK