Maarit has had an extrodinary 4th Birthday. Her celebration started when a package arrived for her from Nana and Papa when we returned from Bergen and has continued through the past week and a half, culminating with a huge party yesterday.
It has been wonderful to see her showered with so much love and special wishes. She is so very proud to be 4...she has been waiting to be 4 since her classmates began to have their birthdays last year.
This is the Curious George dress I made for her party.
On birthday morning Maarit dressed specially for school and was able to open a few gifts before her day started. She discovered a beautiful bunch of balloons tied to our front porch as she left the house. They were a surprise from our neighbors, Jessie and Egil. They also stopped by at the end of the day with a gift. They are so very kind to her and made her feel very special all day.
We brought treats for her class- special rainbow cupcakes we made together. We made cake batter, separated into different bowls and added the different colors of the rainbow. Then we separately spooned the dough into the cupcake papers. They actually turned out to have a rainbow of layers in each cupcake and were a ton of fun to make together!
She was very proud to give a treat to her classmates that she had made herself.
A very proud Birthday Girl!
Our rainy walk home for Birthday Dinner. Maarit chose Ramen Noodles and Hot Dogs as her birthday meal.
And she opened many more presents since she was lucky to have packages waiting for her when we got home from friends and family in America.
A favorite new craft item are these face paint crayons. This was her birthday request Raspberry cake. We made it with butter cake batter and frozen raspberries, it was pretty tasty! She picked raspberry ice cream to go with it.
Yesterday (Oct. 20) was her Curious George Science Experiment Birthday Party. She invited 16 friends over for wonderful party. We had 3 different experiment stations: making Slime, making Butter and building and igniting Volcanoes. Each friend was given a lab notebook and they participated in each of the different activities. Afterward they glued a recipe for how to do the experiment in to their lab notebooks. They each were able to take home a bag of slime (I am sure some of the parents were not too keen on that!) and a jar of homemade butter.
It was very busy! Our friends Aaron and Annemieke came to help us run the different labs and Maarit's babysitter, Siri, helped with all the kids. It was wonderful to have so much help, we were very grateful. I think all the friends had a good time. Lots of parents stayed and visited. Our neighbors, Jessie and Egil also came to celebrate. She had a special visit from one of her teachers, Ms. Correen.
It was a day full of excitement and lots of special people.
Here are some lab station pictures. It was hard to capture all the little ones in one place, they had fun going up and down the house and thoroughly enjoyed playing together. The grown ups were so busy I do not think any of us thought to try to capture pictures of the group until after the party was finished.
Here is a picture of the purple group at the volcano lab. They had little goggles and Daddy and Siri are helping get all the reactions ready for volcano eruption.
This is the red group with our friend Aaron making Ooey Gooey Slime. It was so fun and sooooo messy. There was slime all over the kitchen. We learned that making slime with 1 child is much different than making slime with 3 different groups of 5 children. Such fun, it cleans up pretty easily.
This is our friend Annemieke making butter with a group of children. They enjoyed all the bouncing to shake it up.
Maarit and her friends, Loura and Julianna, bouncing and making butter!
And here is Maarit with her birthday cake. She wanted a Curious George face...I tried my best! The recipe I found for the homemade chocolate frosting was so yummy. Homemade cake batter and frosting are completely necessary here in Norway. The ready made frosting comes in only one flavor (vanilla) and for a portion of about 1/2 cup you pay over 8$. Box cake is about 10$ a box...very different than the baking aisle in the States. Needless to say, I am getting much better at baking and actually it is sooooo much better to make from scratch. Maarit and I added some banana chunks to our white cake batter and swirled in some cinnamon and other spices so the cake was quite monkey-licious!
It was a very Happy Birthday for Maarit. Her first every, big girl, all her own friends party. Mommy will need a few days rest to recover! However...now that she is 4 and never naps, she has been playing non-stop with all gifts (lots of fun crafts and legos!) and keeping Mommy and Daddy on their toes. Such a grown up girl these days.
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