Our little girl turned 6 today, and we all had a relaxing day with our family.

Playing her new Junior Monopoly, wearing her new watch, and I’m surprised she is not sitting on her new little office chair – all of which she loves.

Gramps and Eli sharing an ice cream moment

Eli and Grace were both very excited to be on the way to Jeffrey’s Bay for a holiday today. To dissipate a tiny amount of the excitement about seeing all the grandparents, we had them singing, “Where are we going?” clap, clap, clap, “Jeffery’s Bay” (to Dora’s tune)

We celebrated Grace’s 6th birthday today with a enchanted forest fairy party, and for the cake we made…a fairy toadstool cake!

There is a bit of a back story with the cake. Things were looking good, icing on the bottom part and it was all going smoothly. We carefully put the top part on and it was all looking good. Then things started to happen….well just one thing really – the cake started to collapse on itself.

Panic stations!

Very fortunately it did stabilise, or at least it did for long enough to make it to the party – it even gave the cake more character.

Here is the back of the cake (which started as tall as the front). I think cutting the cake to size just took away all the strength and the weight of the cake on top just squished the walls out.

Fortunately it held it together and was well received. It was a good team effort to put this together, and we even managed to get to sleep at a decent time last night!

Party prep means there are spares/duds for eating, and well….what can we really say about this?

Eli came home singing “5 little monkeys bouncing on the bed.”

Grace is suddenly having a colouring frenzy. Whenever she has a moment to spare she starts to colour in her colouring book. Her colouring seems to have entered a new phase, with much more accuracy

Colouring is for everyone

I said to Eli, “Take some fire starter sticks and go and build yourself a pretend fire outside,” and with those words sparked a new game of creativity.

Grace’s zen fire

Eli made a pile of sticks and stones, and then pretends to light it

Grace’s fire with a, “triangular base”

We were busy making a cauliflower risotto and we think it was when the wine was cooking off that Grace says, “That smells disgusting.” I wasn’t sure if it was the wine smell or the cauliflower, so I asked her, “Grace, does it smell like fart?” She says, “No! It smells disgusting.” Make of that what you will. She then went on to try the risotto and really enjoyed it.

While we were eating dinner Donné asks Grace, “What happened to your skirt Grace?” (she wasn’t wearing it any more after school). Grace says, “I had an accident, I laughed so hard that I wet my panties!” She and Scarlett were on the see-saw together and Scarlett bounced so high in the air that she did the splits, and this resulted in a big laughing fit for both of them.

We spent yesterday celebrating Andrew’s birthday and having a wonderful time with friends.

Happy birthday Andrew!

Those pesky relighting candles…

Let’s microwave something for dinner

Off exploring over the rocks and into the bushes

I think I’ll just do some modelling

Zooting down the zip line

Tree climbing fun

Our little tree hugger

End of the day, getting tired….or just pulling a model pose?

The bicycle gang – Grace is actually quite zippy on her bike