Kennedy's Birthday

On Wednesday, we celebrated Kennedy's 8th birthday. Wednesdays are our busiest day of the week, and this was no exception!

I baked cupcakes for her class on Tuesday. Then, Eric let her pick out Halloween frosting at the international market (taboo since our school doesn't celebrate Halloween!). It turned out that buying frosting was much cheaper than making my own, so I wasn't complaining. Kennedy helped me decorate the cupcakes, of course.

On Wednesdays, I take them to school, so that Eric can play basketball with his friends. So, I drove to school at 7:15, then again at 8:45, and then later at 4:15. Good thing it's close!

She got to share cupcakes with her class during their 15 minute snack time in the morning. They sang "Happy Birthday" to her in 4 different languages--English, Korean, Mandarin, and Spanish. After my short stint in her classroom, I headed to the cafeteria where I spent about 45 minutes catching up with former students, which was a lot of fun.

After school on Wednesdays, they have swimming, so I met them at school to save a little time, and then we walked into Itaewon to have dinner at the restaurant of her choice. This year it was Outback. We're not really sure where that one came from since I think the kids had only been to Outback once in their lives!

Dinner was good, and a nice change of pace, especially since I've been cooking every night these days. We still haven't been to most of my favorite restaurants this fall!

She had decided that she wanted to have dessert at Outback, so I had given away the extra cupcakes earlier in the day (after saving one for Cade, of course). We were a bit surprised when she said that she was just too full to order dessert (enter mom guilt here, as my mind starts to racing as to how we're going to sing and do the whole "birthday" thing without a dessert!).

Eric convinced her to pick up a cookie from Ben's Cookies (so delicious!), since it was on the way back to school, anyway. Then she could wait a bit and get some walking in before she had dessert. She happily agreed.

Wouldn't you know it? Ben's Cookies was closed. As we stood outside, waiting for the boys to come get us in the car, we did some brainstorming. She quickly came up with heading just a little further to the nearest Starbucks to check out their selection. It didn't take her long to choose the chocolate muffin, and no, she had no problem finishing it!

We made it home and then raced (a bit) through the cupcakes and gifts before finally getting the kids to bed an hour late. The one thing that she really wanted this year was the rainbow loom and bands to make bracelets. I would imagine that we're a little late to this party (as we are to most things these days), but she has been having fun producing bracelets en masse in the past week.

We told her last year that she was going to get this year off from having a big birthday party. Obviously, I'm so relieved, since I didn't know at the time that I would be 36 weeks pregnant for her birthday! She had a great attitude about it, and she is very understanding of the fact that this year it's her brother's turn for a party. So, we had one night of celebration, and I think she was pretty happy with it!