The Seidel Family: Happy 4th Birthday Grace!

Happy Birthday to our Grace Caroline who turned 4 on March 12th! We were in Orange Grove on the morning she turned 4, so we celebrated with some powdered donuts and a gift. Then, at lunchtime, Janice made her an ice cream cake so we sang and blew out candles again! We came home that night, GG came the next day, so we had a small birthday party for her on Tuesday. Vic came home at 3 so we could begin. We are having a all-kid birthday the first weekend in May so all of our family on both sides can come celebrate once instead of coming 3 times or having to pick and choose which kid to celebrate. Plus, the first birthday is such a big deal so we have to have a party for Everly! Anyways, Grace has been telling me for awhile now that she wants a Shimmer Shine birthday party. And then about a month before she turned 4, she told me she wanted a Salon birthday. In her words, we would go to the salon and the boys would stay home and cook us dinner! She is so funny! So, I tossed around ideas of taking her to get nails done or to the salon to get her hair trimmed and fixed or braided or something fun. But, in the end, I was afraid that wherever I took her, she would get shy and then not want to do what we came for. So, I decided we'd have our own Shimmer Shine Salon birthday at home. I setup fun stations for us outside for our salon, we made homemade pizza for dinner, we blew out candles, opened presents and had a great night! Here are pictures to tell the story...

Here she is...so happy to finally be 4! (I can't tell you how many times since her birthday, she will tell me about certain things she can do now because she is 4!)

Granny Irene came over to eat lunch with us and brought Grace a birthday present. It's sort of a funny story because Granny Irene is having a harder and harder time keeping things straight and getting her words out. She is one of the funniest ladies though and of the times I've had with her she's always told it like it is and could go from one topic to another to another and it would be hard to keep up, even when she was doing great! Anyways, she gave Grace a birthday bag with Easter decorations in it from her house and while she probably really wanted her to have them, it was just so funny! I was excited; they were great decorations! And Grace was so good to love them too and be so sweet!

Happy Birthday to you Grace!

After Grace was dressed and ready on Tuesday morning, GG told her she could start her salon day by doing GG's hair. So she brushed and brushed.

Then, she taste tested her birthday cake batter.

They colored some Shimmer Shine coloring sheets for a little while.

And then, although it was not part of her birthday activities, she, GG and Atticus sat down to have a tea party with the princesses. Grace really gets into pretending; here she is mopping up the mess from a spilled teacup.

While they played, I made her cake and tried to pipe Shimmer, the genie onto it. It is almost a pinterest fail because her face does not look like the picture and is basically orange! But, I still loved it!

This shows what I was trying to make happen! I was pretty proud anyways!

So, by this time, Vic was home, so we headed outside for our birthday salon activities! Look how cute her birthday outfit is! GG made it, of course!

So, Station 1 was foot massages. Atticus loved this. Grace took awhile to try, but then loved it too.

Station 2 was putting on Makeup. This station was so fun because GG let the kids do her makeup! Yikes! Atticus worked on her and it was interesting! Grace was very into doing her own and really liked the lipstick. In case you didn't know, Grace has really been interested in my makeup recently and has wanted to put it on me. So, it was fun to watch her work so hard on doing her own.

The kids painted my nails for me next. And then Grace had a back massage.

Next, we had a surprise birthday phone call from Shimmer and Shine! They called precisely at 5:15 and it was so fun to watch Grace get so excited and almost shy and just laugh and squeal!

Then, Grace worked on GG's hair one last time before we headed inside for Station 6: homemade pizza!

First, Vic made this DELICIOUS goat cheese, tomato and rosemary tart!

Oh and we had to watch some Shimmer and Shine too.

Then, we all made parts of two pizzas with the toppings we liked!

When we ate dinner, Grace did not forget to ask for her salad. For the past couple of months, she has told me her favorite food is salad and she wanted us to eat salad at her birthday party. About a year or so ago, she was into eating lettuce off my plate, but recently she has decided she wants her own salad...and by that, she means a few pieces of lettuce. She will usually eat a few, but mostly she likes for it to substitute for any other vegetable we are serving that night. But, we made sure she got her salad on her birthday!

Then, it was time for birthday cake and our annual "kid with mom and dad" picture that I cherish so much. We sang to her and she blew out those candles and then we jumped into that cake. Funny story: so, I read that to get very white icing, instead of making buttercream out of butter and shortening, to just use twice the shortening. So, I did, but didn't realize that a brick of shortening was not 1/2 a cup like butter, but one cup. I knew something was wrong with it when I tasted it and not long after, I realized I'd put in too much shortening. So, I had to double everything and ended up with a double batch of shortening only buttercream. But, at least it finally tasted right. It took all of that icing to ice this cake and although it tasted fine, it was really greasy! Next time, I'll just have semi-white icing so I can use all the butter!

And finally, we had presents! Grace got her own pretend makeup, a book, a Princess Tiana doll, a shimmer and shine game, new clothes and new shoes and a princess scooter!