Birthday festivities

I had hoped to have a real backyard birthday party this year, but that idea got dropped when the remodel wasn't anywhere near finished. But we ended up with several fun days of celebrating six years with my girls anyway!

Starting with the ever-popular rainbow cupcakes with buttercream frosting (48 of them took me all afternoon to make). I think I need to find information somewhere on "How to Frost Cupcakes".

I brought them to school on Monday to help fuel the kids for their outdoor "Field Day" which is lots of fun.

We had our own outing at our private beach cove on Saturday which was great! Too bad the jellyfish will arrive soon.

A very Ariel birthday

Tomorrow is really the day my girls turn five years old, but we celebrated early so we could have a leisurely Saturday afternoon family party. The theme was The Little Mermaid, Catherine's current obsession, and we played the Broadway soundtrack for the first time so we can start learning all the new songs before we go see it with Grandpa in August!

Catherine has also been talking about a chocolate cake with pink icing for weeks, so we set out to make one this afternoon.

Here was the result! Not bad for a nearly five-year-old "helping", I think. Each girl got five candles.

Catherine loved her new stick horse that she's been asking for. I think she named it Prince. Or Princess. I guess she's not quite clear on its gender.

Grandma also sent kids' paddles for the kayaks, which we had been looking for for a long time. Perfect!!

Elisabeth got a new Princess backpack that she absolutely loved and started wearing around the house. Catherine got an Ariel backpack that she loved too, but was not quite as obsessed with it.

A very happy day! My little girls are growing up so fast!

They're still teensy tiny girls, though! We did weights and measures today:

Catherine: 35 pounds (16th percentile), 40 inches tall (8th percentile).
Elisabeth: 32 pounds (4th percentile), 38 inches tall (3rd percentile).

Yes, they're small but mighty! Healthy and lively and growing and catching up fast all the time!

Happy birthday to me!

Thanks for the happy birthday wishes, everyone!

I had a great 50th birthday (despite already breaking my birthday present)! The weather was gorgeous and I got in a lovely 52 km (32.3 miles) on my bike (~16 mph pace) and then ran 5 km (3.1 miles) around my neighborhood in a comfortable 34 minutes. Yeah, I would have swum a token 500 yards too, but didn't have time. Maybe tomorrow. Chose to go out to dinner instead and had a lovely piece of grilled tuna followed by cheesecake, along with a robust zinfandel. Yum!

The very best part was having my 4-year-old daughter Catherine sing happy birthday to me in the restaurant all by herself for the very first time. And she even got all the lines right! Elisabeth can't really sing yet, but she gave me a nice kiss that was just as sweet.

Looking forward to following some great Ironman coverage tomorrow and maybe even some streaming video at http://www.ironmanlive.com/ if they don't manage to muck it up like usual. Good luck, everyone!!