Nine Years of Evelyn!

I can't believe how quickly the years are flying! Evelyn is tall, creative, with a quick wit, and a generous nature. She loves to work hard, make new friends and challenge herself. She feels most happy when she is being crafty with friends. She makes me laugh when she talks with people: she sounds like a little adult. She adores swimming and sledding. She loves sacrament meeting because that's the best time to snuggle and think about Jesus. She is still nervous around fire. She is starting to get too tall to dragon run everywhere, but she still thinks of herself as a dragon. She is getting very good on the piano, but if you don't watch her, she will just play her favorite song, "Tarentella" over and over as fast as she can. She has decided she wants to learn Spanish and how to knit. One of the things she has been most proud of herself this year is that she has been braver about bearing her testimony at church, though she still writes out what she wants to say so she won't forget when she gets those tummy butterflies. When she grows up she wants to be a scientist engineer and make wings for people to fly like birds.

Happy Birthday, Gorgeous! 

This year Evelyn decided she wanted to have a few friends for her party, and have a Lalaloopsy theme. She has really been into Lalaloopsy dolls. She brings her dolls, Silencia and Publicity, with her everywhere. One of her favorite things to do with friends is make her dolls clothes with felt. So bright and early on her birthday, we gave her her first present: another doll! She named her Violette, and promptly stripped of her outfit and put on a homemade one. 

 Here she is playing with her new doll.

When her friends arrived, we ate breadsticks and pizza sauce: perfect finger food!

 For Evelyn's cake, we made cupcakes (egg-yolk only!), and frosted them so the girls could decorate lalaloopsy faces on them. They kind of all look like they have 20's bobs.

 Evelyn and her friends had a fun time decorating them, but the frosting bows dyed your mouth, so they didn't like eating that part. I was pretty surprised how well the cupcakes turned out.

 After decorating the cupcakes, we made lalaloopsy dresses. We had everyone bring their lalaloopsy dolls, and I taught the girls how to make cute 50's skirts for them.

 My little clown!

Here are the dolls dressed in their new dresses!

 After the dresses, the girls played a game that we made up: Magnarbles. Then they ate cake and that was the party!

 Then later, we had Evelyn's birthday dinner: fried rice (I totally forgot to cook the pork, so we had it with chicken!) with the rest of the cupcakes, and cookies and cream ice cream. Evelyn opened her remaining gifts. She was able to bring her new Littlest Petshop toys with her in the car to New Mexico to make the drive more fun for her.