Ice skating party! They basically give you a discount on the "public skate" admission and a table to have cake at, which was just great. We cut a lot of matching scarves to give the kids as party favors, which doubled as a way to tell which kids were part of our group in that sea of people.
They had a great time!
A little bit about Kaitlyn:
*She loves all things FLUFFY. Hence, this was some of her favorite birthday presents:
Fluffy and soft and unicorns and slightly nerdy, glittery phrase on it. Totally her. She isn't into pink or frilly. Nothing too "feminine" or dainty. But "soft" will get her every time. She sleeps in a nest of about 17 blankets on her upper bunk perch, usually with small piles of books surrounding her.
As a good example of herself, this is what she picked out with Grandma's gift card.
Unicorn knee high socks, a book to read, something to create with, and a Bop it. She really like all of the pillows, but they took up too much of her gift card all at once, and this was about getting LOTS of things.
*Something I'm really proud of this year is that she CHOSE to take violin lessons. I need to explain why that is big. She took piano lessons for quite a few years, but it became a little battle, both with herself and with us. She liked piano when it was easy, but got quickly upset when it didn't come easy. We were the enemy for enforcing the metronome. And I get it: piano is hard, and metronomes make no one happy inside. But when she was just miserable about struggling through new song after new song, and begged to quit, we let her. Both her mom and dad had exactly one year of piano lessons, so we didn't feel like we could do otherwise without being hypocrites. And we felt like it was okay since she would get violin at school. In the end, if she wasn't willing to put in the work, then we shouldn't pay for lessons. We were clear with her why she was quitting: if you aren't willing to put in the work, we aren't paying for lessons.
4th grade is a big change in the orchestra world at her school. Kindergarten through third, all children learn the violin together. But 4th-7th graders were placed into an upper and lower orchestra (upper and lower half of each grade), and they can switch to cello or viola or base. Kaitlyn ended up in the upper orchestra, first violin, but came home after the first couple weeks of that and said she wanted violin lessons. We reminded her of what we expected if she was in lessons, and she told us that she would put in the effort. She just didn't like having the teacher's time so divided among the sections, and wanted help to keep up with all of the older kids.
At her first lesson, I think she said about two sentences total. She mostly nodded with wide eyes. So I wasn't sure what she thought of this new teacher. When we headed to the car, I asked her if she liked it, and she said "THAT WAS AWESOME!!" She loved to have the personal advice on how much bow to use and what in particular she needed to work on in each piece of music.
Since then, she has continued to practice hard every day, and by the end of this school year, she was the third chair of the first violins. As a 4th grader, in a 4-7 grade orchestra!
*Speaking of violin lessons, her violin teacher has twin girls who are nearly two years old now. She has been talking a lot lately about babysitting next year, and has been practicing with our own family. We go out on dates and leave her in charge often now, and she does a great job. I told her that if she wants babysitting jobs, then the best way to get them is to play with kids she meets. Parents want to hire girls who genuinely like playing with their kids, and who they see their kids enjoy as well. So she decided to work on these twin girls, who always eyed me with suspicion because they don't like mom being occupied by violin lessons.
And now they adore her. They get so excited to play with "Kaken" and love to chase her around their backyard. They are still pretty attached to their mama, and Kaitlyn gets a little sad when they get shy, but she does a great job taking care of them whenever she can.
*And of course, this is the year she fell in love with ice skating. She has been asking for lessons since the first time we took her skating, and I finally caved last summer. Since then, she has flown through all the lessons at the rink. I wish she had picked something closer to home and cheaper in the long run, but sometimes you can't help what you fall in love with!
*She still loves Studio C, but her biggest favorite right now is an online game called Roblox. She would stay on there all day if I let her! She also loves Stranger Things (a scary show on Netflix), Sherlock, and Harry Potter. She's almost done reading the entire series. Oh, and Imagine Dragons.
*Mostly, I am just so impressed with how kind and happy she is!
