Emma's Fourth Birthday!

Emma is now four! I can’t believe my little girl is that old! For her birthday, we woke up and decorated the house a little bit. I made a cute balloon “Happy Birthday” wreath with Calena a few weeks ago, so I displayed that, along with balloons and signs and other fun things. Here it the wreath, I thought they turned out really fun! Thanks, Calena!

We made chocolate waffles with cinnamon honey butter for breakfast and sang to her. Even Cal was getting into singing to her. She was very excited about this birthday!

Then we went to a dance class at the Ogden Eccles Dance Center. My friend, Jasmine Draper, teaches little girls there, and it was “bring a friend day”, so Jasmine invited Emma to be her friend and try it out. Emma had to take Callahan with her to go out on the dance floor. Emma would drag him around and help him do the moves. The little girls were so adorable and just said the cutest things! Once, when Jasmine instructed the girls to reach their arms up up and grab some “peanut butter” so they could squish it between their feet, Emma blurted out “Callahan is allergic to peanut butter”. Jasmine was so good and it was fun to see her in action. It was fun. Emma especially loved the bar, and is now practicing different things she learned in class at home. Later on, we looked at her baby book and made cupcakes together. We had yellow cake with chocolate fudge frosting, and decorated them with sprinkles and little bowling pins. We had a little birthday party for Emma on her real birthday. We went to Fat Cats, and Emma was able to invite three friends to come with us. We went bowling, ate pizza and breadsticks and pop. The kids were just loving the bowling! Emma has such fun friends, I’m grateful for that. Then we opened presents and had the cupcakes.

I accidentally deleted all of the photos from her actual birthday, which made me cry, and cry hard! ): I wish I had them, there were some stinkin' cute ones, but I guess I can’t turn back time. So I’ll try to remember the memories the best I can if I can't get them. In the mean time, I'm working to try to recover them.

On Saturday, we had a family party for Emma. It was a “Hello Kitty” themed party. It was fun, because she was into the whole planning and deciding what she wanted to do. We did it at Cheese Park in Bountiful. The kids played at the park for a while and the adults visited. For lunch, we had hot dogs (that’s what Emma really wanted and begged for, even though I tried to convince her otherwise. She replied with “It’s MY birthday, so we can do what I want.” Yep, she was right) with all the fixings and homemade corn dogs and all different types of salads. It was actually pretty good, if I must say so myself, though I’m not a huge hot dog fan. Here's the little birthday princess!

Part of the fam enjoying each other. It was a hot day!

Then we did silly string, which Emma’s been asking to do for several months now. We just had fun getting each other and sneaking up on family members. It was a fun thing. It was water balloon time after that, which was just as fun! Emma knows how to plan a party!

Dave thought he got me good...

But check him out! Gotcha!

We then did cake and ice-cream. I planned out a cute Hello Kitty cake design I was going to do, but then Emma told me I needed to revise it and make a Hello Kitty Kiss cake. Emma has this strange fascination with the band Kiss. She said she wanted a cake that had Hello Kitty that looked like a Kiss band member with her tongue sticking out like Gene Simmons. Yeah, I don’t know if many four-year-olds know who Kiss is, let alone ask for a birthday cake featuring Kiss. I tried to talk her out of that many times, but she was firm, saying that it was HER birthday, and she really wanted that. She was telling everyone she was going to have a Hello Kitty Kiss cake when they asked about her birthday. So I couldn’t let her down. I thought it turned out pretty well, for a Hello Kitty Kiss cake…what a combination! I used mostly fondant, and some regular butter cream.

Right when we took the lid off the cake holder, Kaison came up and snatched the tongue off the cake and ate it, which was hilarious! But I never got a picture of the cake with the tongue and everything. Oh well. I’m jinxed this birthday! Luckilly, Amy was there with her awesome photography skills and captured the above pic of the cake. Emma also requested Playdough ice-cream, which is her favorite. We sang "happy birthday" to her, in the crazy Ryerse style.

Here's Emma blowing out the candles, again a pic courtesy of Am! Thanks!
Then we did presents. Emma got spoiled, as always! Everyone is too kind! She got tons of fun things and is having a great time playing with all of the goods. Then Dave and Randy had to head to the BYU game, so things kind of disbanded. Here we are opening presents.

My mom took Emma birthday shopping to pick out some toys. She had a great time. After looking up and down aisles of toys, when she saw this iron, she exclaimed, "This is what I've always wanted!" Even better, the name of the iron is "My Fantasy Iron." Man, I wish I had fantasized about ironing. That's on the bottom of my list of household chores I enjoy. It was cute though!

Happy birthday, little girl! Mommy and Daddy love you so much! We can't believe how fast you're growing! You are such a cute, talented, smart, sweet girl and we are so happy you're in our family!