Chickeymonkey thanks you very much for the wonderful birthday wishes! She had a lot of fun this weekend, and in fact her birthday is STILL being celebrated today at class with monkey brownies. Everybody has been ooh’ing and aaah’ing over this cake, and for anyone who wants to get creative with their next birthday cake, you can find tons of really neat cake molds right here at Wilton.com.

The absolute highlight of the entire weekend? One of the girls hit a jackpot on those games that churn out tickets to be spent on cheesy plastic toys. The machine kept spitting out tickets, and she ended up with a pile about 3-4 inches thick. She was so excited, and then she had an idea. She said “I know! Why don’t we put everybody’s tickets together and then we can all get something!” So that’s what we did, we combined all the tickets, they counted them up, and each of the 9 girls got 80 tickets to spend. Chickeymonkey was first in line and wanted something that she didn’t have enough tickets for. So I asked everyone, if they got what they wanted and had any tickets left over, they could donate them to The Birthday Girl so she might be able to get the one she wants. Nearly all the girls had leftover and donated, and at the end of it all, Chick got what she wanted and had a few tickets left over for something else.

I nearly cried at the generosity and giving spirits of these kids (there were 2 boys, too!). It was truly a heartwarming moment.

After all the bouncing, cake, presents, pizza, smores, flashlight tag, shakes, movie, slumber party, church, grandparents, dinner at her favorite restaurant, laundry, and baking a monkey brownie for her classroom party today, I’d say it was a pretty busy weekend and I’ve got a very happy little 7 year old.

And as for me? I’ll be diving in to my own very special project for a week or maybe two, and then I’ll be painting a whole bunch – starting with a custom cat portrait of a beautiful orange tabby, and I’m pretty excited!