What do you do when you turn 4?

What does a great 4th birthday entail? I had one of those rock it out days with my girls today. Pictures will be posted tomorrow. I'm so exhausted that it's all I can do to just record a bulleted list of the stuff we did. I'll post pictures to go with each bullet so it makes more sense. But I didn't want to forget what we did today because it was so fabutasticly four!

• Mike and I snuck into their room late last night and filled it with eight big balloons (4 for each girl) and two mylar Happy Birthday banners.
• We decorated the door to our bedroom with more balloons and banners and Mike left the girls an extra special happy birthday note this morning. (He leaves them a note every morning so they know he's not gone back away for a long time)
• I let them have a cupcake along with their normal fruit and cereal for breakfast.
• They got to take a long bubble bath. We curled hair, did age appropriate makeup and got dressed up in skirts that twirled along with cute T-shirts that said "Birthday Girl" on them.
• They got to pick where they had lunch. They chose "The Hangabur King" (Burger King) They've never been there but we drive by it on the way to our parents houses and they see the big slide/ play area. They have wanted to go there forever. So today they got to go. They were allowed to order whatever they wanted which ended up being chicken tenders in the shape of crowns, apple "fries' which were just julienned sliced apples that go in a french fry box so they look like a bunch of french fries and a packet of fat free caramel that looks like it's in a ketchup packet. Super smart BK and a healthy choice. They normally are forced to drink milk or water but today they got to have an ICEE for the first time. Orange flavored and they loved it. Then they played and played in the play area for an hour.
• We then went to a nail salon (a nice one) and we all got manicures and pedicures. This was an overwhelmingly joyful experience for me. Your first manis and pedis are a right of passage so it was great to be able to start this tradition together. I held them up high so they could pick from the huge wall of polishes for their color. (Katie had her heart set on hot pink and I vetoed Jessica's starlet red choice so she settled for a lighter red shade with sliver glitter in it.) They got to sit in the big massage style chairs and put their nails under the fan and got to watch all the other ladies getting their nails done. They were so cute and so excited and thought they were so big.
• We then went to Nugget and they debated for twenty minutes over which cake they wanted for their party tonight. Yellow lemon cake, chocolate overload, sunflower cupcakes or pink frosted raspberry mousse with white butter cream roses? It was a very long and arduous decision. The pink and white cake won out in the end.
• Tonight would be their first ballet/dance class. My parents purchased them a series of 12 weeks of dance classes and our local ballet studio for their birthday. We needed all leather pink ballet shoes so we went and bought those. When they saw the pink Angelina Ballerina leotards and tutus they basically freaked out and lost their minds. Little did they know they would be getting one of those outfits later that night.
• I grabbed some beverages and fresh fruit and headed over to Papa and Grammie's so I could make them watch a couple of episodes of Dora and I could hurry up and wrap the last of the birthday presents.
• We rushed over to dance class and I laughed harder than I have laughed in a LONG time. It was cute, yet simultaneously embarrassing, yet simultaneously scary for 45 minutes. When the dance teacher asked the girls to flutter their hands and go around the circle and imagine what their fluttery butterfly fingers were painting in the air the other little girls gave answers like "pink glitter, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, purple hearts, rainbows." Not my kids. Katie said she was painting "a picture of my sissy" and then hugged Jessica's neck super hard. And Jessica announced she was "painting a duck". They galloped instead of skipped they looked like little freaks among the tutu, sparkly, princess loving other little girls. But they had fun and they are ready to go next week.
• We ended the night with their birthday party. When presented with the choice of where to have your 4th birthday party, most kids would choose a pizza place where there are games and rides and pizza right? In fact, I suggested just that to the girls. "Hey, you guys get to choose where to have your birthday party. Wouldn't it be fun to have a PIZZA PARTY? You know the place where they have the purple dinosaur you can ride? And games? Fun huh? A PIZZA PARTY!!! Yay!!!" Nope, not my kids. They wanted Miso Soup with extra tofu, edamame and teriyaki chicken. Oh and sushi. So we ended up at Osaka. I think it was the first 4 year old birthday in the history of Osaka Japanese Restaurant. What the freak kind of freako kids pick to have their birthday party at a Japanese joint? Steamed and salted soybeans over pizza??? Really?
• Grandparents came, pink cake was consumed along with the sushi and tofu and soybeans and a jackpot of presents were generously given. The girls will be moving to their big girl room and big girl bed this Saturday so they got new bedding from us along with some small toys and much needed shirts. They had no shirts! Gigantic strawberry shortcake type dolls from Grandma and Grandpa Meeker, the dance classes along with the missing pink Angelina Ballerina pink tutus and outfits from Grammie and Papa and cute little shorts from Grammie Bea even though we won't let her pay for them because hello? Assisted living costs a fortune!
• We came home and they requested the story of their birth for their bedtime story. Somehow, in my exhausted muddled brain, this ended up with me stuffing their new stuffed Easter Bunnies into my Tshirt and acting pregnant and waddling around their room and then tossing the pink "newborn Katie" bunny at Katie and the purple "newborn Jessica" bunny at Jessica in gleeful celebration of my c-section. And I wonder why my kids are weird? That apple didn't fall far from the freak tree people.

And so as they as in the movies..."Jessica and Katie Turn 4" is a rap. I will rest now. My awesome Mom points are up and I figure between today and Easter and giving them a new room on Saturday, I can milk this forever. At least until Halloween right?