Sea World

We took Alice to Sea World on a Saturday in April. Mom, Dad and Alice. We arrived early in the morning trying to take advantage of the cooler weather. We immediately went to see the Shamu Show first. Alice was very impress with the Sea World trainers. Ever since that show, she has talked about being a trainer at Sea World. I told her she had to at least learn how to swim first :-) Her second epiphany was the Journey to Atlantis ride. Alice was definitely tall enough to ride, but did that mean she would enjoy it? After riding it 3 times in a row, I would say she definitely Did like it. Other Alice favorites were the Shamu roller coaster and the Crazy fish ride she got to ride with her dad. We will definitely go back again sometime this year...maybe with a friend this time!

I made a joke causing Alice to laugh.  She leaned back and said, "You're joking me out!"

Daddy daughter time

Alice and I enjoyed some frozen yogurt after school.  My project ended, so I was able to pick my sweetie up early.

Alice plays school

For a few days Alice has been teaching me at "school". I'm Alice and she is Ms Reanna.
This weeks letter is B. She also goes over the days of the week and reads stories to me :-)

Alice brings home her baby

Yesterday the Bickel family spent the day looking at prospective new family members. We started at a pet rescue meet and greet. We then went to the local animal shelters to see what was available. After seeing a lot of poor homeless doggies, we settled on a 12 week old chihuahua puppy. We took him home and he rode in Alice's lap the entire ride. Alice named him Cupcake Bailey Bickel. Cupcake Bailey has settled in nicely at the homestead. We have had an accident (pew!) but we knew house breaking a puppy would be work. He slept in his crate the first night without protest or incident.   This morning we let Cupcake Bailey wake Alice up.  He climbed around Alice's head and began licking her face.  Alice woke with a smile on her face and told us that she liked the way Cupcake Bailey wakes her up better than the way mom and dad do.  Apparently licks to the face are better than our tickles and songs.  I'm sure I'll have more to tell later, but for now.... All is well!

Bickel Gardens

Alice sitting next to our flower garden. 

We were watering and picking weeds while we enjoyed the weather.

Alice's Pump it Up Party

Since her classmate's party last year at a "bouncy house", Alice has been insistent that her next birthday be celebrated at a "bouncy house".  I heard this for an entire year. 
All year, Alice was jealous of anyone having a birthday before her next one came back around.  "I want my birthday to be first" she would say and then pout about it NOT being her birthday yet.  It is impossible to tell a 3 year old that her birthday HAD been first that year in January - before anyone elses birthday was celebrated that year.  So we struggled all year long with friend's birthdays coming and going.  Alice would say she didn't want to go to so-and-so's party...only because it wasn't HER birthday.

The end of the year approached and I noticed that there were about 5 kids in Alice's class with a birthday in January.  I could forsee a disaster forming when more than one parent decided to plan a kids birthday on the same weekend.  I had already booked Pump-It-Up for Alice's party.  Now I wanted to make sure as many of the kids from Alice's class could make it, so in November, I sent out 'save the date' cards to let the other parents know - I CALL DIBS on that weekend (January 14th) and it worked.

I know Alice loves to go to inflatable playrooms, however I also know my child can be intimidated by the bigger kids and even just kids she doesn't know.  Since she has been looking forward to this birthday for an entire year, I wanted to make it one for her to remember, because I think this will actually be the first one she will rememeber.  With this in mind, I booked her party at Pump It Up.  It was a little bit pricey but well worth the expense.  With the party package there, you get to invite up to 25 kids and you have 1 1/2 hours to jump with just your friends in 2 private jump rooms, each with about 4-5 different bounce houses.

Since this was Alice's first large birthday party, we also invited the family and pretty much everyon came!  Didi and Pop, Aunt Papa, Uncle Paul, Chris and Sean, Gammy, Aunt Sissy with Joci and Juliette.  It was a real treat that Aunt Sissy brought Joci and Juliette a few days early to stay with us and we got to play together for 3 days.

I also knew this party could turn out to be fairly large with kids AND parent, so I asked my friend Deb to make the cake again this year.  I asked it be themed "girly with rainbows and flowers" and boy did she deliver!  I am so lucky to have a fabulous cake designer for a friend.  She had make the cake or cupcakes for Alice's parties for the past 3 years and they are always phenominal....all the parents wanted her card.

The day of the party arrived and Alice was beyond excited.  All in all about 12 classmates came and with the addition of my friends with kids and all the family in town we had about 35 people including parents.  Pretty much ALL the cake was eatten (I think we had about 4 slices to take home for later) and everyone looked like they had a great time.  This was the first visit to a bouncy house for Chris and Sean and they took to it with no fear.

We took all the presents back to the house to open later and the family all met back at the house to hang out for a while.  Alice opened presents at a leisurely pace.  I think it took her about 4 hours to get through them all.  We  brought in Rudy's BBQ to feed the family dinner and sat around and talked while the kids played.  This was our time to host family at our house for an event and I think it went quite well...nothing broken and Alice was good about sharing, expecially with the boys.

When the day was done, everyone was exhausted, but I can safely call the day a sucess.  A birthday Alice will remember (i hope).