They Say It's Your Birthday

Shaylyn turned 11 on January 30th. I can't believe she's already 11. Crazy how the time flies by.

All she wanted for her birthday this year was a Build A Bear animal. I think since our service at Christmas time, all the kids have wanted one. It might mean super simple gift giving for everyone this year!

My original thinking was that we'd take Shaylyn ON her birthday with just mom and dad. But Eric suggested that we could maybe go the Saturday before. I left it up to Shaylyn. We explained to her that her birthday wouldn't necessarily be exciting, but it was her choice.

She decided to go on Saturday. So late afternoon on the 26th we loaded up and headed to the mall to the nearest Build A Bear. She had fun choosing her pet and although we had all the kids with us, they all were super good and understood that this was for Shaylyn's birthday.

...Her choice is made with a Calico Kitty...

...Eric tried to convince her to get a husky...

...She wasn't upset about not having a bear, she was just in a bad mood altogether...

...It took THE longest time to find accessories for this cat...

...It's hard to see, but she got to ring the birthday bell...

...Meet Gothia, the roller skating Calico Kitten - who listens to Don't You Know You're Beautiful and smells of chocolate...

After we finished at Build a Bear we decided to take Shaylyn out for her birthday dinner. She said she just wanted to do something like Burger King...Eric persuaded her to go to Golden Corral instead. It may have been with a bit of my prompting as well.

We hit the Golden Corral in Orem and HOLY CROWDS OF CROWDS, BATMAN! I've never seen a restaurant so packed. We got in fairly quickly and got to our table and had a wonderful meal. Tanis even mentioned to the people taking care of our table that it was Shaylyn's birthday, so she got to stand on her chair while they sang to her. All while she gave Tanis the stink eye.

On her actual birthday I wanted her to feel like she still had a nice day. Sadly, I was dizzy ALL DAY long and spent most of the day in bed. So I had wanted to make her cookies, but just couldn't. Eric had to take Tanis to the orthodontist and so I asked him to bring some sort of treat home.

I made Shaylyn's favorite dinner, Spaghetti only to then realize the spaghetti sauce had mysteriously vanished. So I used pizza sauce. Eh, it wasn't great, but everyone ate it and no one really complained. After dinner we watched Hotel Transylvania. Eric thought it would be a movie Shaylyn would enjoy. And it was one the kids and I had wanted to see.

We all laughed throughout this movie. Even Eric laughed in quite a few places, which is kind of rare in movies like this. I totally want to buy this movie now. But you know, it plays with Halloween which is like one of my favorite holidays.

After the movie we had Root Beer Floats and then sent the kids off to bed. I think Shaylyn had a pretty good day.

The Friday after her birthday we let her invite 3 friends over for a sleep-over. I learned my lesson last year when she had like 7 people here. We kept it simple, it was a good thing. We even got lucky and my sister and her new hubby had his kids this weekend, so Aubrey was able to come join in Shaylyn's party. Shaylyn was so happy.

I kept the cake and cookies somewhat simple. For her cake Shaylyn wanted a creeper cake (same thing as her Halloween costume) and for her cookies she decided that tiger stripes were cool.

Even though there were only 3 girls here, we let Shaylyn blow out candles. What's a birthday without doing that?

...Yes, she does have makeup on her face...she's supposed to be some type of animal...

Happy 11th birthday, baby girl. Hope it's one you always remember.