Madeleine Turns 10

HAPPY 10th BIRTHDAY to this kid!!

Madeleine has been SO excited for this day that she had even googled "Ways to make the day pass faster." At long last, the day is here.

We started off the morning with homemade pancakes and presents.  Madeleine was delighted by all her loot, but soon had to leave it behind to head off to school.  No big deal, though; at school, her classmates all signed a birthday poster for her to celebrate the day!

While the girls were at school, I got busy baking for the upcoming Friday night birthday party.  Three dozen pumpkin cupcakes later, I headed out to pick Madeleine up from school.  She had been adamant about wanting to help me frost the cupcakes, so I waited until after school to mix up some vanilla frosting.  Madeleine is having a Harry Potter-themed party, so she wanted to color the frosting Hogwarts House colors.

We each got started with a bowl of frosting.  Madeleine dropped in yellow food coloring to frost some Hufflepuff cupcakes.  I went with blue for Ravenclaw cupcakes.  When I moved onto Green Slytherin frosting, I added some yellow to my already-blue frosting in the bowl.  All that was left was red for Gryffindor.

MADELEINE: Mommy, can I frost the Gryffindor ones??
ME: Sure.  You can just put the red food coloring into the main big bowl of frosting, since it's the only color we have left to do.
MADELEINE: Okay. (tipping a small bottle upside down and dropping some drops into the bowl) It's not working!
ME: Let me see. (Peering into a bowl of still-white frosting) Did you stir it around yet?
MADELEINE: Uh, not- (peering at the label of the bottle she was holding) This is PEPPERMINT EXTRACT!

So we had peppermint-flavored frosting and pumpkin cupcakes.  A match made in Heaven, amirite?

ME: Okay, well, we can't use the frosting then...
MADELEINE: Uh, should you make some more?
ME: Well, I just used up ALL of our confectioner's sugar.
MADELEINE: Uh, should we go to the store?

No.  We should not.

I managed to save the day by adding red to my green frosting, making a perfectly Gryffindorian maroon.  Not too shabby, right?:

To cap off the birthday, we had a family dinner out to the restaurant of Madeleine's choice.  Here's what she wore to dinner:

Celebrating 10 years of uniqueness!  Here's to many, many, many more!  Keep on being your wonderful self, Madeleine!!