Birthday!

Last Saturday, Ree (aka Jewel aka Rebecca aka our oldest child) turned 7. Seven years old. Sheesh, she's getting old. To celebrate, she requested a party at her dance studio.

Sidewalk chalk drawings and a sign welcomed our guests.

Different rooms in the studio were set up for eating, doing crafts, and, of course, dancing. The day before, Ree and I went to the decorate the studio, and when we got in the car, she had a large mixing bowl filled with pink paper. She had taken Victoria's Secret tissue paper and turned it into confetti to decorate the table. Clearly, there are glue guns in my daughter's future.

One of the high school girls who takes lessons at the studio was the helper for the party. She also performed a solo from Sleeping Beauty for the party goers to watch. Ree got to watch her rehearse.

The first "guests" to arrive were her siblings, and Leon and Michael were quick to join in the dancing.

As everyone arrived, they got to put on costumes.

The teacher led everyone through a short ballet class, and Leon and Michael disappeared when the ballet began. Throughout the party, we found them in various rooms of the studio, always playing Angry Birds.

Natalia, though, loved every minute of the class and did her best to follow along doing everything "Jewel" did.

After they finished dancing, it was time for pizza, followed by crafts.

Finally, it was time for cake. Ree had looked at cakes online, and she fell in love with a pale pink cake covered in marshmallows. We did our best to recreate her vision. (In doing so, we learned that Target marshmallows are not remotely uniform in size. And that perhaps we shouldn't decorate the cake 90 minutes before the party. There was also an incident with the original batch of strawberry buttercream frosting that will not be discussed. What you see is a proud work of chemicals held together with Crisco and sugar. (Did I mention the underlying cake was a boxed red velvet cake loaded in dye?) Disturbing as it is, the kids, of course, loved it!)

After cake, there was more dancing. And no party is complete until someone teaches Dad how to do ballet.