Happy Birthday Emily!!

I can't believe I have a five year old kid.  I love it.  Ages 0 thru 3, in my opinion, are hard.  When Em turned four it was like I got a new kid.  I loved four.  And I think I will love five even more.  She is such a sweet little girl, and acts so grown up.  She's pretty dang easy.  Although her favorite phrase still is, "What are we going to do now Mom?"

Luckily today she didn't have to ask that.  We are currently at Ramstein Air Force Base accompanying Ben while he attends a week long conference.  So, we're staying in a little apartment, and enjoying a little break.  Today was quite nice. 

Em opened some presents at lunch.  She was immediately drawn to the Where's Waldo book from Grandma and Grandpa.

We played her new Dominoes game

And baked her cake.  Cake is Em's favorite thing about birthdays.

She helped with the clean up

And while it baked we did her new Geo Puzzle for Asia.  She now has all the continents.  The girls fought over Nepal like it was WWIII.  Who knew Nepal would be such a sought after prize?

We went to a park right outside our apartment

Caroline didn't want to be within arm's reach of Em

 What can you do?

We had burgers at Johnny Rockets.  Yes, Johnny Rockets in Germany!  The Air Force is spoiled, I tell you what.  This base is something else.

And Em opened the rest of her presents. (She had opted at lunch to save half of her presents to open later in the evening.  What kid does that?) Among her favorite of course, was her Rapunzel doll. 

We had cake

And blew out the candles

And the saddest thing ever was the cake was a mess!  I apparently didn't understand the dials on the German oven...  I thought I had set it to bake, but upon further investigation, it looks like I set it to broil.  So, yeah, I broiled her cake, which was why I thought it turned out so nice.  It was definitely finished on top, but a gooey mess in the middle.  So sad, since in Em's opinion cake takes the cake when it comes to birthdays (haha!).  And I can't put it back in the oven because Ben had already frosted it :(

I'm not blowing up this picture because it's gross enough as it is in the smaller version.

And we got to facetime her little cousins Ricky and Deborah, which is always hilarious.  We get lots of closeups of Deborah's nostrils.    

Happy birthday Em!!