Happy Fifth Muska!

Emmuska was very excited about her birthday and had been counting down the days until we got there on her calendar. Unfortunately I had gotten sick just a couple of days before her birthday so wasn't feeling up to what we had originally planned on doing. Thankfully Emmuska understood this and took things all in stride. She enjoyed helping make the day special but also understood keeping it a little low key.

Sick or not no birthday is okay without a cake. (I learned this last year when I was miserably sick on my birthday and unable to make my cake...) So Emmuska set to work helping me make her birthday cake. Even if I had been in tip top shape she would have wanted to help - she loves to cook.

Given how much of the process she took care of for me with regards to her cake I feel pretty certain that if I'm sick again this year I can just set her loose in the kitchen and know that I will still get a cake out of the deal. And that is a comforting thought.

And of course all that hard work must be rewarded with the chance to lick off anything that came in contact with the cake batter. (Excluding the cake pans of course.)

She had to wait all day for Mycal to get home so she could open presents. Whenever I think she isn't being patient enough about something I try to remember this (as well as the patience she exhibits regarding Christmas) and know that she's actually doing quite well.

What could this one be?

A tea set from Grandma and Grandpa!

Look how excited Liberty is about this. That pretty sums up all of our feelings about this tea set. We love it! It's a really nice hard plastic set that you can actually use. Emmuska had been throwing little tea parties for months with a really cheap dollar store set. Every time she got it out another piece was broken. This was the perfect replacement.

Grandma and Grandpa also set a cookbook and a couple of baking sets. One for doing cupcakes and and the other for cakes and pies. Emmuska was so excited about them. She keeps going over the recipes trying to figure out which one we can make with the ingredients we have in the house. The cookbook (not pictured sorry) is amazing. It's perfect for kids and a lot of fun. We've made a couple things out of it several times.

After doing presents Emmuska and Liberty had a little tea party while I finished making dinner. This picture makes me laugh because it pretty much sums up the relationship between these two. Emmuska can frequently be found doing something for Liberty that Liberty can (and sometimes would rather) do for herself. Many times Liberty graciously accepts the 'help' as she is doing in this picture. Other times she pitches a royal fit and disallows even Emmuska's shadow to enter her personal bubble. The dynamics of their relationship are so often changing that I'm often baffled and sometimes even frustrated by it but then I'm sure that is very similar to how my relationship was with my sisters growing up.

Back to the tea party. Tea parties around here pretty much go the same way. I make up a thing or two of hot chocolate and put it into the teapot. Then I put milk into the creamer holder (is better word for that dish? I obviously need to study up on my parts of the tea set terminology).

Emmuska serves the tea (hot chocolate) and tops each cup off with a little cream (milk).

We all gently stir the cream into our tea and then delicately sip our tea.

Until Samuel discovers what we are up to and figures out a way to crash the party. Not that he's trying to crash it just that cup mastery is a skill he's still working on.

'Can I scoop the hot chocolate back into the cup?'

'Mmmmm, that's a nice cup 'o tea'

After dinner we did the cake - which of course had to be a piggy cake. The funny thing about the piggy cake this year was that she batted around the idea of doing something else but when it came down to is she still wanted the pig which was very relieving for me as I'm not really sure how I would have done some of the other things (mostly cartoon characters of one sort or another) now I have a year to contemplate any other design I might be able to do if asked. Hey I did make a Dora doll...maybe I could pull something awesome off for next years cake...maybe.