Piper's 6th Birthday

Piper was set on having a jumpy party this year, and I figured January weather is unpredictable, so why not go to an indoor jumpy place.  I had never been to Pump It Up before, and it was a little drive down to Chula Vista, but they had good staff, brightly painted rooms, two jumpy rooms, a party room, and it was all a private party, so we didn't have to share with any other birthday groups or wild public jump time.

This was her "kid party" we held on Tuesday night (vacation week so no school) before her real birthday (early, since her daddy was going on a 3-day bachelor party trip on her birthday weekend).  The kids (and adults too) had a great time on the slides, and the pizza and cake room was equally fun with balloon hats (I had pumped them up ahead of time, and with some help, got them twisted on site) and party favors where they could make their own "marshmallow jumpy" (building creations using marshmallow as a glue/base, and other treats including 3 skinny red vine ropes, fruit-by-the-foot, gummy bears, gumdrop dots, pretzel sticks, and graham cracker squares).

On our way--van full of balloons!

Marissa found a 2' step just her size to slide on.

Piper going down the BIG slide!

Piper, Brooklyn, Jane

Addisyn and Mommy went down the big slide with Marissa. 

Jacob

Justin trying to get the flag at the top.  Only socks allowed. Slippery and fast.

They rewarded valiant efforts to get to the top, and turned on the glow lights.

Piper's hair flying with 6 girls in the wind tunnel.

Party Room!

Birthday hat and birthday cake (another work of heart by Aunt Stacy).

Addisyn's marshmallow jumpy creation.

I figure success was declared in the car on the way home when Piper announced "That party was a BLAST!"

It might be the first time we didn't open gifts in front of friends, but it was actually nice opening them at home and taking a picture of her holding each one, that we then inserted in her thank you cards.  And since we had an extra week of vacation, she had the gift of time to play with all of them...filling our days with glitter sand, glitter chalk, and sticker crafts.

Piper was just supposed to get one party, but when two girls couldn't make it, we invited them over to the house on her actual birthday for a simple dinner with family.  It was like a mini-jumpy party with our backyard bounce house.

STATS: as measured at home, on her real birthday--
   Height-- 46" (63%)
   Weight-- 46 lbs (57%)
   ...growth this year... 2" and 4-5 lbs

MILESTONES:
Piper had been looking forward to switching from a harness carseat to a booster seat in the car, a privilege we decided a 6 year old is mature enough for.  This will be helpful after Wednesday night swim practice so she can keep her parka on when buckling up for the drive home.

Piper now has her very own "Penny Savings" bank account at USECU.  She collected all her cash from birthday money, star tickets, and lost teeth, and had $59.  I gave her a $20 bill at the bank and she opened her account with a $79 deposit.

SKILLS:
Piper has always been proud to be able to take care of herself.  We are happy that Piper prefers to brush her own hair (probably because it hurts less that way).

At school, she is learning to read at a quick pace.  She loves reading her "class books" almost completely on her own.  (Class books are ones made at school, where each student writes one sentence and illustrates his/her page, and after the teacher laminates and binds it, they all take turns bringing their book home for a night.)  Now she is taking home 1st grade leveled reader books already!  For bedtime stories, she helps me read the words she knows or can predict the last word of the sentence based on context.

PERSONALITY:
Piper has lots of personality.  She is outgoing, friendly, responsible, and intrinsically motivated (persistent/determined).  She wouldn't get out of the pool at the end of practice one night until she did the figure she was learning 6 more times because she wanted to get it right.  Her spirited side was shown when I covered her bed with the fort I built over her when she was sleeping (using her birthday gift)--she thought it was really cool and brought her things in there to play before I even woke up.

(We made a similar fort for Addisyn, and Marissa wanted in on the fort fun too...refusing to nap without it for two days.)