Birthday Time for Callie

The birthday celebrations continue!  Saturday morning Cal woke up bright and early and snuck out to the living room to wait.  Gregg heard her get up and snuck out to hang out with her until Sam and I woke up, too.  Then, first things first: time for presents!  All she asked for was new shoes (which we actually bought a week before because her old ones were blown out), an umbrella, and a pack of gum.  Easy enough.  Haha.  She also got some kid-sized work gloves, water shoes, a book (Lola Dutch), popsicle molds, and a library bag (for her to pick her own books with her own library card - which she also got later).

I love how Minnie is in on all the action!

bonus videos!

"opening presents"

After presents was breakfast time.  Callie chose pancakes with sprinkles and strawberry jam (I'm sure she requested a minnie mouse shaped one) with bonus strawberry milk (it only seems to come out for special occasions).  After we ate, she and Sam rode in the burley to the library with Dad for the express purpose of finally getting her own library card.  (She had asked a librarian months ago when she could get her own card and she said, "How about when you're five?"  Cal has been counting down ever since.)  While they were off on their adventure, I stayed home to frost the cake.  Cal requested a chocolate cake with strawberry frosting and chocolate drizzle (a la this).  I found a recipe that called for freeze-dried strawberries to be blended up into a dust and added to butter cream.  It sounded delicious and it WAS.  So I frosted Mel's perfect chocolate cake (baked in three 8" pans) with the strawberry buttercream and then drizzled with the original recipe's chocolate ganache.  (That was the worst part of the whole experience.  I need to work on my drizzle skills.)  While I got dressed after the cake was complete, Cal and Sam set up camp in the yard with her new umbrella.  And then we were off to Pat's for lunch!

Not too shabby for an amateur.

A burger and the best tots around for this girl!

And then we had some down time while Sam slept before we headed on to the next phase of birthday fun: bowling and backyard "bbq" (aka potluck dinner) with all the family and friends.  That hoopla is going to get its own post, so stay tuned!

But before we veer away from here, let's talk about Cal as a five-year-old.  In the past year, she has:

• learned to read (quite fluently) both aloud and silently, including easy reader level 3s, the Book of Mormon, and pretty much anything else she wants to
• pretty much kept the same bedtime routine: prayer, "talk about days" (where we talk about what's happening for the next two days), best/worst (she tells me her best thing and worst thing of the day), questions (just whatever she has on her mind) (and introduced it to Sam, who now shares a room with her and wants to do the same thing she does before falling asleep)
• become extremely interested in money (always on the lookout for coins on the sidewalk, asking for "the green kind" for Christmas, always wanting to count what she has, buying her own bike accessories, etc.)
• taken 6 weeks of swimming lessons and loved it (minus the freezing cold pool)
• learned how to dominate the games of UNO and Set (she also likes to play Connect 4, Go Fish, No Match, "Scramble" Jr. (aka Scrabble Jr.), Guess Who?, and up to 100 piece puzzles)
• learned how to ride a bike (never using training wheels!)
• become obsessed with holidays and decorating for them (especially if streamers are involved)
• started picking her nails/fingers (just like her mom - oops!)
• visited the dentist for the first time (no cavities and no nervousness about the experience either - she asks me all the time when she can go again)
• started kindergarten (well, the two-week summer workshop - she cannot wait for the real thing, and every time we pass her school she tells me she's going there "at the end of August!" and "it will be just like Summer Kindergarten except we'll read and do math." I hope she's not disappointed . . .)
• continued her love of mail - sending and receiving it
• started taking showers instead of baths (and loves to wash everything by herself)
• hiked 3 miles (or nearly, and multiple times) without a single carry by mom or dad
• memorized the 6th Article of Faith (I know!)
• really upped her pretending game (I think it helps that Sam can play along now) with school and "story time" and shopping and doctor
• recently conquered the monkey bars and skipping (both in the same week!)
• become THE BEST potty training coach/cheerleader I could have imagined for Sam
• 5-year-old well check stats: weight = 30.4 lbs (1%), height = 41 inches (23%), eyesight = 20/30 (and when the asked her if she could count (to four!) she looked at me quizzically, like, "Four?" and said, "one, two, three, four . . ." which Sam then finished for her up to ten.  Haha!)

What a girl!  She's full of spunk and cheer and mischief and stubbornness and we couldn't imagine life without our Callie June.

Next day loot photo shoot (there will be a few spoiler alerts
as to gifts she received in the next half of her big day).  She sure
is loved!

Watch Callie grow:  4 years | 3 years | 2.5 years | 18 months | 12 months | 11 months | 
10 months | 9 months | 8 months | 7 months | 6 months | 5 months | 4 months | 
3 months | 2 months | birth