Sarah's 9th Birthday Party!

Sarah turned 9 on January 26th!

At 9 years old, Sarah:
- is my smart, sassy, tall, beautiful, messy, outgoing, happy, goofy, little dancer girl!
- is 58 inches tall (98th percentile), weighs 74.8 pounds (77th percentile), and has a BMI of 15.63 (36th percentile).  She is tall and lean.
- still LOVES to read and is often reading many books at once (which are all scattered around the house and her room).
- is doing very well in school. She routinely gets very high scores on the standardized testing each year and good grades in school. She got moved up to the 4th grade math class (she's a 3rd grader) at the beginning of the year and is now moving up to the 4th grade accelerated math class for the rest of the year.
- loves dance and is on the "Junior Dream Angels" team at Center Stage Dance Studio this year. She is competing with 5 dances (jazz, tap, lyrical, ballet, and production) and has Daddy Daughter dance also for the recitals.  She is at the studio 5 days a week, but never complains about going to practice. She also takes a gymnastics for dancers class at another gym.
- started piano lessons over last summer and continues to learn new pieces every week.

For the first time, Sarah chose to do a friend birthday party this year instead of a family one as we usually do.  We scrambled to get it planned for the only weekend we didn't have extra dance practice and Austin's basketball tournaments, but it turned out great.  We had her party at the Way Cool Cooking School and Sarah chose the "French Bistro" theme.  We had a big group with 13 of her 14 dance teammates able to join us and 4 friends from school coming to celebrate.  Austin got to join the culinary fun too.  The kids made quiche, crepes, and Oreo "macaroons".  The cooking school had also made Sarah a Paris themed cake and decorated accordingly.  Check out the fun...

Sarah got an apron signed by her friends!

Her Paris cake and the party favors for our guests (take out containers with measuring cups, baking mix, and a recipe card)

Sarah with Eleanor (on her right) and Emelia (on her left)

Brooklyn, Ellie, and Joelle

Levi, Austin, and Trevor 

(Trevor didn't cook, but did get to eat some of the goodies)

 Elena and Levi

 Kaelyn and Alexa

 Adalyn, Abby, and Delaney

 Nadia and Lilly

I didn't catch Maggie in the first shot because she and Josie got stuck on the ice fishing with their brother and were a few minutes late.  She's on the far right here. Josie's on the other side of the room.

Time to start cooking!

Sarah started out whisking the eggs for the crepe batter. 

Josie adding in the milk.

Austin whisking after adding the flour.

 It was entertaining watching the kids learn how to crack eggs for the quiche!

While the quiche were in the oven, the kids worked on cooking their crepes and making their Oreo "macaroons" (basically Oreos covered in candy melt chocolate and then drizzled with white chocolate).  The crepes were fun to watch!  The kids each learned how to prepare the pan with butter, put the batter in, swirl the pan around to spread out the batter, let it cook the right amount, then flip it to finish cooking.

 Josie dipping her cookie

Sarah pretty excited about the demonstration of making the crepes!

Expert drizzling

The kids could pick if they wanted to flip with a spatula or just flip it in the air from the pan.

Time to flip!

Sarah's completed Oreo macaroon

Celebrating a perfect flip!

Enjoying their cooked quiches!

Time to eat the crepes!  They filled them with berries and put whipped cream on top. Yummy!

Now how do we eat these?

Birthday cake time!

It was a very fun party to celebrate with so many of Sarah's friends!