Syd's Birthday at Color Me Mine

It's fun having Sydney help decide on where she wants her birthday to be. This year she decided that she wanted to do some painting! I tried to do as much as possible in advance, but that never works out as expected. We did make a huge batch of pretzel rods first dipped into milk chocolate and then into yellow and purple candy that look like paint brushes. Some reason I didn't take photos of them after they were finished, but they took us about three days to make! They were delicious! Amanda came in for the party too. I had this amazing idea to make these rainbow cupcakes, needless to say, they aren't nearly as easy to frost as the tutorial said they were. We ended up with a whole bunch of mismatched cupcakes. No one cared and Syd even wanted one of the rainbow ones to be hers. So I guess she liked them!

The pretzels in production :) 

 Some of the goodies! 

   

 Some of the snacks

   

 The goodie bags filled with paint brushes, some individually wrapped chocolate covered pretzel paint brushes we made, candy, a paint palette filled with watercolor paints that we made from scratch and a few other goodies!

 

 Syd and Aunt Amanda

 

 My brother in the back getting the party started

 

 Giving the kid who hates instructions, some instructions on how it all works

 

 Cristy, Madeline and Remington

 

 Syd concentrating on her doggy bank, "rainbow"

 

 Jill helping the kiddos

 

 Chris touching up the pooch

 

 John, Grace and Caroline

 

 The entire Thompson family gets into it

 

 Syd and Megan

 

 Birthday girl being sung to

 

 Wishes made, time to blow out those candles

Syd could barely wait to get home to open her presents. Was a little hard opening presents with one hand.

 

 Getting some help from Aunt Amanda

Pima County Fair

Aunt Amanda was in town for our favorite Pima County Fair. We were able to show her all of our favorite games. Here's where we win a stuffed animal every year. No joke, we play until we win. We're serious carnie folk.

One of the million and two rides Syd rode.

This Merry Go Round can seriously make you ill....especially if pregnant. Thank you Aunt Manda for saving this girls equilibrium this year. Syd on her favorite animal, the zebra

How fun was this?

I'm not sure who had more fun, Amanda or Syd. But they went down the slides about five times!

Who doesn't love a chocolate covered banana? I'll tell you who, THIS GIRL! 

Syd's Ambulance Ride

The day started off pretty normal. Aunt Amanda was in town and we took Syd to school and started working. About an hour later, the phone rang and it was her school. My heart instantly drops. It was the director, Miss Pinar, who said she was trying to call Chris because she didn't want to upset me since I was pregnant (heart drops more). She tells me that Sydney is ok, but that she went into the bathroom and another little girl went to slam the door shut on her. Syd saw it coming and put her hand out to stop the door and her thumb was caught in the door jam. Her thumb nail instantly came off and the door actually cut into the nail bed under where the nail was in addition to the side of the finger. Miss Pinar told me that she already called an ambulance and they were on the way. I told her I was on my way and hopped up to get dressed, Chris was on the phone and I mouthed "Ambulance was called for Sydney" as I rushed into the bedroom to get out the door. No less than 5 minutes later, Chris was already out the door on his way and my phone rang again. The EMT's from the ambulance called and said it was pretty bad and she needed to go to the hospital and asked for permission to take her. I quickly say yes as I'm heading out the door. Thankfully Chris got there before the ambulance took her and was able to ride with her. Ironically they pulled out right in front of me, so I arrived at the hospital the same time that they did.

Pregnant lady running at the Ambulance doors, they saw me coming, thankfully! We got her into a room and it was by far the scariest moment for a parent. She bled a lot and went into shock when her finger was slammed. They had it wrapped up, but had to give her a shot in the finger for the pain so that they could x-ray it and give her stitches. Miss Pinar was so worried about her, she actually came to the hospital to make sure she was ok. The shot hurt her so bad, she was screaming bloody murder and holding on to me so tight. Thankfully it worked and she didn't feel all of the stitches that went into her nail bed or next to her finger.

Auntie Betsy was able to get us into see Dr. Siegel, the best hand surgeon in town (who doesn't even see children) and to say that she screamed bloody murder at the appointment is an understatement. It was an absolutely emotionally draining appointment, but we walked out with instructions on how to care for her finger. One side of the bed had a huge gauge taken out of it, so our fear was that it had to be broken in that spot. It was hard to tell on the x-ray, so we moved forward just taking care of the finger. Hoping for the best that it would heal and preparing for the worst that the nail might not ever grow back and if it did, it would be deformed. A very scary moment that I don't wish on any parent or child.

Changing the bandage on her thumb was something we had to do every day. Syd was absolutely not a fan and would fight us while kicking and screaming. First day it took us 3 hours to get it changed. The next day Papa and Lala came to help, that took about 2 hours and all four of us holding her down. We get the dressing off, finger soaked and new bandages on though. She just needed to see that no matter how big of a stink she threw, we were still going to change the bandage. Finally she realized that mommy wasn't going to make it hurt when she changed it. So I made her make a video so that I could show it to her the next day when she fought us again. 

Sydney Turns 5!

I had this grand plan to surprise Syd by filling her room with balloons and putting streamers across her bedroom door for her to bust through in the morning when she woke up. Sadly, Chris had to go out of town so it was just her and I. She was just on the mends from the flu (which also happened while he was out of town). She woke up, hurled all over the bed, ran into the bathroom only to hurl everywhere except into the toilet. After I cleaned up the bed, the entire bathroom and threw her into the shower, she did it all over again two more times. This stuff only happens when he travels. I say all this in order to explain my ghetto fabulous bedding because I'm paranoid that you'd actually notice, which I sure you wouldn't have, but now that I've mentioned it, you will. Anyways, Syd wanted to sleep in our room with me, our little sleepover and I agreed. Looking back, I should've said no because first it was hard to get her to go to sleep. Second, it was hard blowing up balloons and such without fearing that I'd wake her. Even when one slipped out of my hands as I was tying it and flew recklessly all over the room. She didn't budge. And lastly because the amount of balloons just doesn't look the same in my huge room versus her bedroom. Plus my doorway was GIGANTIC to try and cover with streamers. I actually ran out of streamers in the process.

Anyways, all of that didn't matter because when she woke up as a 5 year old she was absolutely ecstatic! She woke me up because she noticed the door all streamered. It caught her off guard! I told her it was ok and to look at the floor and that's when she saw all the balloons. Then of course I sang the Happy Birthday song as loud as humanly possible.

My baby girl sleeping soundly with her cat, Gray, right at her feet. Plus the lovely purple streamer door!

   

 Her the moment she woke up before she tore through them as fast as she could!

   

 Thankfully Chris was able to fly home on her birthday, so I had to hold her off with the presents. They all came in stages, which I've learned is a good thing. They appreciate and understand them more when they don't open 30 presents all at the same time. She opened a present Dad brought her home from her trip first. It was REAL gold!

 

 If you can't tell, she was extremely excited about the game Pop goes the Pig

 

 She had been asking me for Hungry Hippos for weeks leading up to her birthday. It was only right that she got it. I used to adore this game when I was little.

 bought her some cupcakes for her birthday and told her to make big wishes. Her usual one is "I wish for more toys" she says it outloud super quiet, cracks us up.

 

 Hope you get everything you dream of baby girl. Happy Birthday!

T'was the Night Before Turning 5

The night before Syd's 5th birthday we headed over to Lala and Papa's for a little celebration. We like to drag out birthdays as long as possible. Syd was able to have what she wanted for dinner, eat cupcakes that she picked out and open presents.

The whole gang, Lala, Papa, Gigi and Syd eating cupcakes

Opening one of the presents from Papa and Lala. Can you tell that she's a little excited?

A whole set of paints, paper, books, etc. It was an entire painters collection. Holy moly did she love this!!

One of Gigi's presents was a new watch!

The Paleontologist

When Chris travels for work, Syd makes a deal with him that if she's a good girl for me while he's gone, he'll bring her home an excavating kit. She loves these things. It's a solid piece of sand or plaster and she has tiny tools and digs into them to find dinosaur bones, Egyptian mummies, there are so many! My only issue is that they're so messy!!!! Hard to say no to something that she absolutely adores doing.

Just check out my floor, her chair, the table, etc. etc. etc.

Such a happy, dirty girl

Sydney's Jewelry Shop

We decided a little while ago that we wanted to take Sydney to some Assisted Living homes as well as to visit children in the hospital with cancer. We wanted her to see what it felt like to do something nice for someone for no reason at all. Also that it was important to know that not everyone has everything they ask for. Syd made a lot of cards and we even recruited her entire classroom to make a huge stack of cards for when we go. Syd's teacher donated a huge bag of candy for us to take to the kids. Sydney didn't think that was enough. She decided to make jewelry to raise more money. She wanted to make a huge collection of jewelry for the kids, so in turn she sold jewelry all for donation. She set up her booth in the driveway. People could purchase the items or they could donate the purchased jewelry as well as the money to the kids. People loved her jewelry so much, that they wanted to keep it, but we donated the money into the fund. She ended up raising $55 dollars in her jewelry sales!

Here's Syd with her shop all set up!

 

Her selection of bracelets and rings

The necklaces

Syd (who you can barely see because she was being shy and sunk so deep into the red chair) and just a few of the customers that stopped by her shop to buy some items for charity.