Sarah's birthday was on May 23 and it was a 3-day celebration!! It wasn't really intended to be, but it just kind of turned out that way. On Saturday the 21st, she had her birthday party with her friends. It was the day after the last day of school, so she was excited to make it kind of like the last big party of the school year. She invited her whole class over to go swimming, and just hang out. (No pics of the friends of course, but it was a well attended party)
She wanted cupcakes instead of a cake this year. So, when it was time to blow out the candles, we covered one cupcake with 10 candles.
Sarah loves chocolate and the TV show/ band, "Big Time Rush" on Nickelodeon. Here she is at the party eating chocolate wearing a T-shirt of the band. One of her friends came early and gave her a shirt and a CD of them, and Sarah immediately put on the shirt. She later hooked up her CD player to the speakers we had set up out side so that she and her friends could listen to "Big Time Rush" during the party. I had no idea how popular "Big Time Rush" was to 9-10 year old girls, but they were all super excited to listen to it.
Here's a view of some of the food. Because it was so hot, I blew up a little swimming pool I got at the dollar store, filled it with ice and put all the food on it. It worked really well.
Here's Sarah opening a gift from Daddy. She got a jewelry box. He often gets her and Kaitlyn necklaces from other countries. She also got her ears peirced 2 months ago so that she could wear earrings on her 10th birthday. Now she has a place to put everything.
Here's the "bowl of chocolate" that Sarah wanted as treats at her party. This bowl is also sitting in another bowl of ice to keep it from melting, because even in our playroom where it was, it was about 85 degrees with the Air Conditioning on. 
Here's the cupcakes, some of them already eaten, in the shape of a 10.
Anticipating eating the chocolate cupcake. This is before we loaded it down with candles.
The day after her party, being Sunday, Alan made her a birthday crown for her to be queen for the day, and Sarah and Alan made plans for her actual day. Then, the next day on the 23rd, her real birthday, at exactly 7:08am (the actual time she was born), she and Alan got up and made all sorts of noise and yelling, "Happy Birthday!!", "Sarah is 10"!!
Because she likes to cook, I let her go through a dessert recipe cookbook I had, and told her she could pick anything to make on her birthday. She picked a cookie pizza.
Then, the last thing she wanted to do was watch her favorite movie, "The Karate Kid" with Jaden Smith. We like that one better than the old one because there's only 2 swear words in it (which we muted), and we think it's cool that it's set in China, and that the guy who trains him (Jackie Chan) actually knows martial arts.... But, we still waited until after Kaitlyn and William had gone to bed to watch it because it was still too old for them with the fighting and stuff..
Because she likes to cook, I let her go through a dessert recipe cookbook I had, and told her she could pick anything to make on her birthday. She picked a cookie pizza.
Then, the last thing she wanted to do was watch her favorite movie, "The Karate Kid" with Jaden Smith. We like that one better than the old one because there's only 2 swear words in it (which we muted), and we think it's cool that it's set in China, and that the guy who trains him (Jackie Chan) actually knows martial arts.... But, we still waited until after Kaitlyn and William had gone to bed to watch it because it was still too old for them with the fighting and stuff.. So, Sarah had a very happy 10th Birthday!!
