Adelaide's 6th Birthday!

I will have to put off my second installment about the Vietnam trip to report on a much more pertinent and recent event. . .the 6th birthday of our not-so-little daughter Adelaide! Since Addie's birthday falls on October 26th, so close to Halloween and in the midst of the fall season, we have been doing fall festival themed celebrations the past few years.  Especially since we moved to Shanghai and we have been missing the vibrant reds, yellows, and oranges of the leaves turning in upstate NY and our yearly trips with Grandma and Papa Barlow to Iron Kettle Farm www.ironkettlefarm.com, Addie wanted to go with the Fall theme.  She actually wanted to incorporate some skeletons, ghosts, and spider webs, as she is a sucker for scary stuff, but I thought that might put a damper on the "birthday" celebration.  So we stuck with pumpkins, turkeys, scarecrows, owls and leaves.

Here are some photos from school, when I brought cupcakes for Addie's class, shared baby photos of Addie, and read the terrific story "The Ugly Pumpkin."

So excited to make that wish ;)

Homemade chocolate cupcakes with buttercream frosting and
pumpkin peeps on top

Still thinking about that wish, the anticipation keeps building

Addie with her Chinese Teacher Du Laoshi as the class
sings "Zhu Ni Shengri Kuai Le."

Finally!

We had a party at our home last Saturday morning to celebrate Addie's birthday with a few close friends.  It was a great time with fun activities and games including, make-your-own pizza faces, pin the feathers on the turkey, leaf sort game, pomelo bowling and pumpkin painting.

Addie and Eric with the pumpkin face cupcake-cake :)

Making mini pizzas with sauce, cheese, mushrooms,
 olives, pepperoni, pineapple.

Zoe and Addie's pizza faces.  I ordered the 7" pizza shells from
City Shop bakery and the kids had fun decorating the tops.

The whole birthday party crew--friends from school and church--
representing Australia, New Zealand, England, and the USA!

Pin the "feathers" on the turkey with blindfold--we used colored
fabric leaves.  I made this turkey last year out of a Wegman's paper
bag and now he is making his China debut.

Little bro Elijah, looking for attention from the
party guests in his Superman costume.  He changed into
this outfit about 15 minutes into the party, when he
realized that he wasn't the center of attention.

Pretty Adelaide digging into her cupcake.