Paige's Birthday

Today we celebrated Paige's birthday with a family party. She turned 11 today...hard to believe! There are so many sides to Paige that are coming out as she matures. She has a humorus streak, a shy side, a serious side, a lazy side, a hardworking side. She is just mostly a joy to be around. A look into her personality is that as she opened one of her presents tonight she made an expression of sheer joy and then said "I have no idea what this is!" with the smile still on her face.

Now on the other hand there is Amber who is very creative and found in one of her activity books exactly what she wanted to make for Paige's birthday. Yesterday, she was outside trying to get pieces of cardboard off the refrigerator box that we had set out for the bulk trash pick up earlier in the day when I was trying to hide the gift that I had gotten for Paige's birthday. I shooed her into the house and then later she got Dave to help her get started on this "project". I had to take over because Dave went to mutual. She had found a way to make a "Toast Rack". Yes a "rack" to hold your toast in for breakfast. Now it looks kind of like a napkin holder, but with more dividers. I think that we had such a kick thinking about what a useless project that we just had to help her make it. We had to glue the cardboard together and then paper mache the whole thing. We had to get toothpicks to hold up the sections because by the time the thing was covered in wet paper and glue it was saturated! It ended up glued to the paper that we were protecting the table with. Amber was so excited and sweet about the whole project. Dave helped me move it out to the Garage to dry overnight and cut around the paper and prop it up so that it didn't collapse overnight.
Kent and Lindsay and I painted it while Amber was at school because I was afraid it wouldn't have time to dry. I must say that we did a fine job and Amber even commented after she got home that we did it exactly like she would have done it. I wrapped it up and waited for the final "reveal"!
Paige ended up opening it up first and had no clue what it was, fortunately we whipped out the book that showed the process and the picture with toast sitting in the sections. It was a big hit!
I was happy that my kids...as excited as they were...we pretty calm in letting Paige enjoy the spotlight tonight. Lindsay became the official wrapping paper cleaner-uper and did a fabulous job! Samantha was the protecter of the already opened gifts. Amber was the tester of all gifts and Kent just enjoyed laughing and watching.
It turned out to be a great day and hopefully a fun birthday for Paige:)!