It takes a week to turn four!

Yes, it took Hazel an entire week to turn four. We had two family parties, a party with her friends, and festivities on her actual birthday. So let's get started on this long post, including about 45 photos! We'll start off with the lovely mosaic butterfly birthday crown Hazel made.
It took lots and lots of shiny stickers placed just so...

We started birthday week with a party at Grampa & Gramma Peirce's house, complete with aunts, an uncle and cousins. Here are the two birthday kids. Fortunately they had different birthday badges, so we knew who was who. Hazel was very concerned that Grampa kept saying her Dora birthday cake was his. Such a silly Grampa.

Having been to a recent party with a pinata, Hazel just had to have one as well. It looks a little high for her, no?

Whoops - the birthday balloons ended up in the tree.

Won't you please go fetch them, Daddy?

Cousins Havalah and Henry looked up to the challenge of helping to smash open that pinata.

For the cheapest pinata I could find, it was very formidable.

So we brought in the big guns.

It took Henry's tenacity to finally spill the goods. Since the mad dash to grab the contents had resulted in Hazel bursting into tears at a recent party, fearful she wouldn't get any candy, H&H were kind enough to understand that there were equal numbers of everything for everyone to be split fair and square.

Sharing a birthday secret?

Making sure she licked all the lovely purple frosting from Dora. Purple's her favorite color, you know. Note the purple frosting covered chin.

Two days later, Hazel invited her favorite pals to Jumping Jacks for some... yes... jumping. Aunt Hilary gleefully kicked off her shoes and joined in, showing off her cheerleader moves from days gone by. She's probably glad all the jumping pictures are blurry. No action setting on the new camera.

The party room was decorated with a Diego theme.

Aunt Hilary was game to fill in at the kids table for a couple friends who couldn't make it. Hazel's making sure everyone knew which Diego goody bag was hers.

Hazel's good friend Amy.

I was glad we actually remembered to bring the birthday crown. She's gazing at her Diego cupcake candle.

This was Reed's first birthday party for a friend, and he gobbled down his cupcake in mere seconds, leaving just a small trace of its existence.

Hazel scored a Cinderella doll, a cool Lightning McQueen marker by number set, some nifty metallic/neon/rainbow crayons and giant Diego coloring pages. This was a Dora calendar, which Amy was excited about because she has the same one! Wow!

And we partied until we wore out the equipment...

We let Hazel sleep in on her actual birthday, even though she requested we come in singing Happy Birthday at 6am, the time she was born. She ended up being happy with just the song. The gift bag from me ended up being quite appropriate. (I was just looking for a quick wrap.) Hazel said she had wished the day before that it would snow on her birthday... wish granted!Her birthday 4 was up early and out looking for the birthday girl...

There she is!

Yaay! The same card we gave someone else that Hazel really wanted for herself! I got her a plug'n'play Toy Story arcade game, just like the ride she enjoys at CA Adventure.If you hadn't guessed from the "wrapping paper," John Deere gifts from Daddy! I think she was disappointed the pint-sized ride-on Gator wasn't in the bag. Really? In the bag?

Not to waste the wrapping, Hazel made some sort of jumping game from the tissue...

We went to lunch at Red Robin, got a free sundae, two balloons and a song from the staff. Such fun! And of course, she had to play in the snow a bit.

Better than any ole' ice cream sundae.

So after Red Robin, Toys R US, and two birthday parties (I forgot to send balloons home with the other kids), Hazel collected just a few balloons!

The day after Hazel's birthday, we headed down to Seaside, OR for our annual jazz festival/birthday weekend with Daddy's family. The first day was sunny and gorgeous, and we drove down to Tillamook to visit the air museum and get ice cream at the cheese factory. We also took a photo with the Oscar Mayer wiener mobile, so that was fun. Nope, not my camera. I'll get a copy sometime. The other days at the beach were cold, blustery and wet. Fortunately, Hazel enjoyed the jazz this year, and she sat in for four sets. She'll tell you that Titan Hot 7 is her favorite band, and we've listened to their cd every day since we got back. She also pretends to play the clarinet now - very cute. I'm proud to say she has excellent rhythm, and while her dancing is a bit avant-garde, I appreciate her enthusiasm and am glad that a few of us didn't mind cutting a rug with her. Just a few of the many strings of jazz beads she collected over the weekend.

We found time to watch the NASCAR race and enjoy gingerbread birthday/race cookies.

Downtime in the motel room was filled with coloring, books and stickers. She's pretty easy to entertain.

Thanks for a great jazz weekend Grandma Kitty!

More presents!

Aunt Trudy scored the reward for awesomest birthday present. She made Hazel two "Rapunzel" extensions. Hazel's been pining for Rapunzel hair, and we had also just watched a show about pagaents for little tykes, which gee, Hazel thought was pretty neat. No need to worry, I am so not a pageant mom. Hazel dubbed this one her Barbie hair and loved it!

I'll spare you the photos of the rest of us trying on Hazel's extensions, but here's one of the princess and her prince. All in all, I think four is going to be swell.