The Ultimate Birthday

Fancy Kenzie! Happy Fourth Birthday last week, Darling!

M is for your mah-velous sense of style. Purple army pants and blue striped shirts do match! And orange flowers go with pink shirts, definitely.
C is for your courage- "I won't cry when the doctor gives me a shot. I'll be brave." And how you try so hard not to cry when you fall down.
K is for your kicks and leaps and beautiful tricks and dances. Just today you showed me a "leap turn" And you said you will only use your awesome kicking leaping powers for good-- "I am a Supergirl Princess and I kill bad guys. I bite their bums."
E is for excitement, which you display with your quiet, happy smile and sometimes with your little round oh! mouth. And sometimes if it's really exciting you jump up and down and giggle. Sometimes you scream. You have quite a set of pipes. Although everyone says you have the sweetest little voice, you can be loud and piercing.
N--is for nice. You are so kind to Hannah. She gobbles up her snacks and you give her some of yours. You always try to hug her when she's sad. You are also very concerned about others and love, love, love babies. You get your baby voice out and say things like, "Oh, little Boston." or "You are so cute little Sophie." And then you tickle their toes and bring them treats and kiss them a lot.
Z-Zoom! (Gosh who put a "Z" in your name anyway?) You aren't really a zoomer, although you do love to race me and Hannah into the bathroom or the bedroom and you will often put on your running shoes. If it's a hike or I want you to hurry, usually your "shoes are too tired." You like to rest, and you are a good, good sleeper. Not being a zoomer definitely has it's pluses--you have never ran into the street and been hit by a car. I can't tell you how grateful I am for this.
I- Imagination and Intelligence are two of your best qualities. Smart, smart, smart, you have always been. (You seem to think that I am smart too, always asking me why? why? why? and then when I say, "I don't know." Giving me the eye and saying firmly, "Yes, you do know Mom!") You remember things that we thought you forgot long long ago. You also pick up on things with little or no effort, like letters, numbers, book memorization, spelling your name, etc. As far as imagination goes, your favorite right now is to pretend that you are a baby and I am your dad (yeah, not your mom, your dad.), and you love to pretend that you are Cinderella and I am the prince (why do I always get the boy roles?). During quiet time I sometimes listen as you read yourself books using all different voices for the characters or I peek in and see your ponies arranged in elaborate configurations.
E- Emotional. I mean this in the nicest way, as in a synonym for "sensitive" which as you can see does not start with an 'e'. When the prince dances with Sleeping Beauty at the end of the movie, you cry tears of joy. When you see a sad picture, like of a lonely baby, you get tears in your eyes. When you think about getting married and moving away from me, you cry. Sometimes you just want to be by yourself. And sometimes, even though you're big and brave now, you say to me, "I need some mommy-holding," and you crawl into my lap.
We love having you in our family!

Three princesses and a prince! For our delightful Miss Mckenzie's birthday we invited her cousins over for a tea party (We don't drink tea, just the fruit kind, and you try explaining that to a 4-year-old). Everyone wore their fancy clothes and I made some fancy cupcakes and helped Kenzie make some fancy treat bags for all of her guests. Hannah was unmanageably ornery so she was sleeping when this picture was taken. She woke up in time for cupcakes though.

We played pin the crown on the princess (those magnets they send with the phonebook are so useful!), and a rousing game of duck duck goose.

In our version of this game everyone eventually stands up and runs around screaming. Very exciting.

Kenzie got some Fancy Nancy clothes from Grandma and Grandpa Chambers, to add to her fancy collection, some fun play-doh stuff from Gracie and a princess picture and some butterflies from Kandelyn and Koy. Earlier in the week she got to have a special day with Grandma and Grandpa Hansen and they had their own tea party and they gave her a Fancy Nancy game! Holy Fancy Nancy! Talk about indoctrination. At least Fancy Nancy is a decent role model.

Our tea party was somewhat fancy. At least I bought a pink tablecloth. I did have their cute little treat bags all set up on the tables but children and decorations do not work at our house. Large napkins do though.
Kenzie and Kandelyn have been the best of friends since before they could talk. Sherrie used to watch Kenzie while I coached cross country and Kenzie and Kanders would sign the word, "friend! friend!" whenever I dropper her off. They still love to play together.

Later that night we went to Chuckee Cheese to celebrate. Once Kenzie got the concept of earning tickets she was pretty excited about it, but mostly she just wanted to play on the playground in the sky. We forgot our camera but we were saved by Chuckee. (That sounds kind of scary. It reminds me of some horror movie). I have to say Chuckee Cheese is everything I remember from my childhood. Loud, Exciting, A Kids Dream Come True. Except I don't remember the scraggily looking adult/teens commandeering the easiest games so that they could earn millions of tickets (no kids in sight). (Good job man without a job--You CAN pop bubbles on a screen so fast that you earned 20 tickets with one token!) I tried not to be bitter, but did manage to shoot them a few nasty looks. Hey! I wanted a turn on the bubble popping game.


Happy Birthday Kenzer. We love you.