Sadie at Six

A Birthday Interview with Sadie

By Mom

 

The birthday girl at Cafe Rio for her Birthday lunch

 

Favorite Color: Sparkly pink or hot pink

 Birthday flowers from Aunt Beaney and Uncle Dave

Favorite Number: 3

Favorite Drink: Orange juice

Favorite Food: fruits and vegetables

Favorite Game: Hide and Go Seek

Favorite Animal: Unicorn

Favorite TV Show: Sofia the First

I feel sad when: I am lonely

I feel mad when: everybody is being mean to me

I like it when my friends: play with me

I like it when I: do art

I wish I could: fly

Who is your best friend? Brynley and Sadie Tyler and Avery

Why? Because they are nice to me

What makes you laugh? Jokes

What is your favorite movie? Barbie movies

What are you most afraid of? Zombies

What is your favorite song? Call me Maybe

What is your favorite activity? Art

What do you want to be when you grow up? An artist

What three things are you are good at? Art, gymnastics, singing

What is the best thing about being six? When you're six, you almost are seven and when you're seven you're almost eight.  And when you're eight, you're baptized.

What makes you special? My talents

Sadie Loo Who!

One very early morning in January, I woke up to a coughing kid.  I went in to check on him and make sure his humidifier was working.  Right when I was getting ready to lay back in my bed, I felt my first Sadie-induce labor pain.  An hour and a half later, and only one day overdue, our third little angel came into the world.

Who would have thought this dark haired bundle of goodness would turn into this adorable and precocious blonde six year old?  The only thing we knew for sure was that she would have dimples because all the nurses cooed over those gigantic craters from the moment she was born.

 The night before her birthday, Ellie and I went to town decorating her door and blowing up balloons for her room.  When she woke up she asked who had done it and I facetiously replied, "The Birthday Fairy."  Later on I found a note in her room:

Dear Birthday Fairy,

Please bring me a birthday toy.  Love, Sadie.

I didn't realize that the child whose mother has ruined not only the Tooth Fairy, but also the Easter Bunny would believe in a Birthday Fairy who has never made an appearance before in her entire 6 years of existence. 

 I also got her a little Birthday Girl pin to wear to school.  Or maybe she thought the Birthday Fairy did.  Who knows?  I should be sure and take more credit next time.  School was short lived, however, because we picked her up at lunchtime to head up to a weekend of fun in the snow in Greer. 

Sadie had actually been planning on a snow party for some time.  She had asked me to cover the house in snow and I had spent hours searching pinterest for some ideas.  And then right after Thanksgiving, some friends invited us to join them at a cabin for the long MLK Jr holiday which just so happened to be. . . Sadie's birthday.  How perfect!  Maybe the Birthday Fairy does exist??

We met up with the Maroneys for a little birthday lunch at Cafe Rio and headed up on our journey.  Sadie had gotten poked in the eye at one point of the day, so we weren't sure she was going to make it through for awhile, but luckily for us. . . she survived!

When the last three families finally made it up to the cabin it was time for CAKE!!!

I've got some foot issues going on, so standing around and making cupcakes wasn't really an option, plus I was busy trying to get everyone ready for a trip to the snow (which is hard when no one owns snow gear and you have to track it all down, your husband is out of town, and you can't walk). . . so I decided a Costco cake would be AMAZING!

And it WAS, thanks to my friend Karen.  She was just going to order me a plain white cake from Costco, we she noticed there was an Over-the-Hill cake design that would work really well for a birthday of sledding in the mountains.  And so the Costco people turned a cake meant for old farts, like 40 year olds ;), into an adorable little cake for a 6 year old. 

We love you Sade Loo Who, who I still wish were two!

Powerless

Remember when I went without power for 3 days?  Yes, you probably do because it's all I could talk about.  Somehow the Preparedness Committee (from our Ward) talked us into going powerless for 72 hours so we could guage our readiness.  They had two things going in their favor 1) I have a total martyr syndrome passed down by an amazing legacy on both sides of my gene pool and 2) the person who asked me lives across the street and could harass me daily.  "Maddy, I see your lights are still on.  Do you need to borrow our camp stove for your experiment??"

We turned off the power on a Friday morning.  I had originally planned to turn it off at night, but the anticipation was just killing me, so finally at 11:30 I just flipped the switch.  That is, I flipped a metaphorical switch because I didn't want to have to reset all the clocks in the house.

No TV, no iTouches (I told the kids we had to save them for an emergency), no water, no heat, no microwave, no fridge, no dishwasher, no vacuum, no washing machine, no flushing the toilet. . . are you following me? 

My kids woke up at 6 am Saturday morning and I yelled, "There are no lights and no electronics, GO BACK TO BED."  They didn't.  I was probably just cranky because I had to get up to go run 17 miles in the freezing cold.  The leather seats in our car were frigid (don't forget your garage door won't go up, so you have to manually open it and park on your driveway) but I was in heaven once the seat warmers kicked in.

I will now share my invaluable lessons, so you will not have to suffer through this experiment of madness:

1. Invest in  disposable paper goods!!  The last thing I wanted to do was wash dishes and I especially didn't want to waste water, so we used paper goods the whole weekend.  I now have a stash with my emergency stuff.

2. You don't have enough flash lights.  I took all my kids to Target to pick out lanterns and flashlights -- everyone got their own special flashlight.  Somehow we still managed to loose a few here and there.  I had a special "flashlight station" where you were suppose to put your flashlight once the sun came up so you could find it when the sun came down.  The kids all ended up playing around with them outside or in the closets.  And luckily we had a million batteries from our Christmas overload.

3. Done with one meal?  Start on the next!!  It took easily an hour to prepare each meal.  We just used our grill for most everything, but the chopping and cooking for everyone on one little pan is rough.  We did eat pretty posh though because we stuck all of our meat from the freezer into a cooler filled with all of the ice from the freezer.  For breakfast I was not venturing out in the cold, so the kids at cold cereal or breakfast bars and fruit.

4. I hate being cold.  That's it.  OK, it's not.  This is where I win the terrible parent award: Sadie came down with a fever of 103 with about 24 hours to go, and I was secretly GLAD she was sick.  Because it meant I got to miss church 48 hours sans shower and also because I turned the heat back on.  I wasn't going to make her any more miserable than necessary.

5. Make it fun!  It gets really depressing just sitting around moaning about not having power, so we planned a lot of fun things.  We went to the park and had a basketball date with friends.  I got out some new games and had bought all the kids fuzzy socks (which I now need to go purchase NEW stuff for the emergency stash).  We roasted s'mores.  I let the kids eat junk food in the dark.  Of course I wasn't happy when I woke up to cheetos all over my carpet the next morning, especially because I couldn't use my vacuum.  We actually ended up eating outside with our fire pit going because there was no temperature difference.

6. Be organized.  Before it starts getting dark you have to get almost everything done for the night --  get PJs out, flashlights found, dinner veggies chopped, house cleaned up. . .  I also had little stations in each bathroom.  We had water bottles for brushing teeth, hand sanitizer for when you went to the bathroom and a bowl to fill the toilet tank with. 

7. Extra! Extra!  Always have more than you need.  I can't imagine if it were a real emergency and a neighbor came over with nothing and I couldn't share.  My family comes first, but I could never let someone suffer, so we decided to make sure we have almost double what we would need so we could still maintain our faith and beliefs even in a time of crisis.

All in all, it wasn't awful and I since I had to suffer through it, I think you should give it a go as well. 

How We Spent our Winter Vacation

Nothing.  Literally nothing.  After Christmas, we had not one thing on our calendar.  One day I looked at Dustin and said, "We have to actually plan something and get out of this house.  I don't know if I can lounge around in my pajamas one more second."

Once I started writing it all down, it sounded like a lot, but I can promise you that we spent a lot of time watching TV all piled in my bed, eating take out and the kids never got dressed or combed their hair for days at a time.

So for the last 12 days, here's how we spent our time:

Dinners with friends.  Including the elusive Maroneys who thankfully did not break up with us.

We actually sat outside since Postino's was so packed.  Luckily between the Arizona winter, a fire, heaters and our coats we were toasty warm.  That's a lie.  I was still cold sometimes.  I'm always cold.


Ellie disappeared for multiple sleepovers and had a few over here.

We rang in the New Year at the Haymond's.  We did a great job of keeping the children awake until midnight.

 

Nate got stung by a bee on his lip.

 

He had a can of soda outside that he mistakenly left unattended.  Went back for a sip and the rest is misery.  I've actually never been stung by a bee before so I asked him what it felt like.  He said, "It feels like getting a baseball thrown into your face."

Saw Les Mis!!  We waited a whole extra week thinking the crowds would die down, but it was still a completely packed theater.  I loved it because I don't think I could not love Les Mis.  I did not love Russell Crowe.  Everyone else worked or was tolerable for me.


Bowling with the Bryners.  It was actually spend-as-much-time-together-as-possible with the Bryners.  We played in the arcade while we waited for our lanes.

The boys signed us up for TWO games of bowling

And mistakenly thought there would be no wait at Oregano's.  But if I'm going to waste the day away with someone, I would definitely pick the Bryners.

Got pedicures with one of my very favorite Laurels.

Holiday party at the Johnson's.  They have a ginormous (hopefully you will understand why this is the perfect word choicen in a moment) screen in their backyard so they light all the fire pits and serve hot chocolate and goodies while everyone chats and the kids watch a movie.  This year it was Elf.  Perfect.

We babysat our favorite baby, Jameson.  According to Luke, he's actually "Lukey's baby" and all the kids fought over whose room he would sleep in.

I ran A LOT.  I'm up to 17 miles.  We go for 18 this Saturday.  So far I haven't wanted to die, but then I think, you still have to run 9 more miles.  But then I think, what's 9 more miles after that many?

An EPIC basketball game between Tim and Dustin.  Tim still pulled out the win, despite insisting that the hoop is 10' 3" instead of 10'.

Birthday party/playdate/lunch for Nate's best friend, Travis.  They did not wear the same shirt on purpose.

Played with all our new Christmas gifts.  Is it really necessary to go anywhere when you have so many new entertaining things?

Ellie and Nate both got iPod touches for Christmas, so they spent a lot of time having incredibly intelligent text conversations with cousins.  Like how much they like marshmallows.

Or videos about bored they were.  Or trying to figure out if it was Ellie or Nate who was texting with Zach or was it Matt??  I'm actually so happy that they have this chance to communicate with their cousins even when we live so far apart and see each other so infrequently.

We had a fun BBQ at our friend's house.  They had family in town for over a week during Christmas, so we were all happy to converge on their house and remind them how much of a mess our children can make when they're all together.

Sadie went for a sleepover with some of her bestest friends -- Avery, Lexie and Brynley.

Molly is a much cooler mom than I am!!  Make your own pizza, movies, and homemade donuts for breakfast. 


Froze to death while we went powerless for 3 days.  On purpose!

 

Oh wait, you want to know why I temporarily lost my mind and agreed to such insanity?  So do I.  So do I.