Happy 6th birthday to our not-so-little Zinnia Delphine!
The last year has flown by, and although it seems like just the other day she was that baby who was nameless for a month, she is now a big school girl….. only 2 weeks away from finishing up her first year at school (Kindergarten). The first baby tooth is gone, she is reading chapter books and insisting on entering swim meets with her older siblings, as well as ballroom dancing competitions, and is holding her own on every front. She might be the youngest but she is most definitely a big girl now, with big goals and dreams!
How she has grown……
Here is our Zinnia, from the day she was born through to the special birthday photos for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and now 6!
Birthday breakfast requests
As is tradition in our house, the birthday person gets to pick their special birthday breakfast. Zinnia had requested ‘breakfast in bed’. She wasn’t fussed what that breakfast was 🙂 As Zinnia’s birthday was a weekday Astrid and Soren decided they wanted to help and had set ridiculously early alarms (especially for Astrid who complains about how early she has to get up for school anyway) and snuck around making Zinnia breakfast.
Somehow they managed to cooperate without fighting and made Zinnia cheesy omelette, with cucumber (Zinnia loves cucumber) and some Nutella on toast and a hot chocolate. We did hear them preparing the breakfast, but didn’t have to be involved!
Zinnia was a tad excited and made sure she was up and had her bed made so ‘her toys could have breakfast with her’. Then her siblings assisted with her breakfast in bed. The most cooperation we’ve had from the three of them in ages – a birthday miracle!
Present time
With Zinnia’s breakfast done, it was present time! We might have found quite a few travel related gifts for her, so she’d be all ready for the upcoming European adventure…..
Zinnia was thrilled with her haul. When you are 6 it’s quantity over quality and plenty of lights, shiny things, useful itmes to put in her travel backpack and squishmallows were received!
Unfortunately for Zinnia, it was a school day, so there wasn’t quite enough time to set up all her new presents before she had to run off to school, laden with cupcakes for her class…..
A special birthday visitor
The local wildlife must have known it was a special day. When I got home from dropping Zinnia off, I got the shock of my life when I went to put my shoes on the shoe rack in the portico, only to find a very spiky friend!
A very large echidna had wandered in and taken up residence behind our shoes! Presumably he was munching on some ants or spiders overnight and thought it was a great place to have a nap and then stayed. We probably all ran straight past him in the morning as we rushed out to school.
It did take Anto and I quite a while to get Mr Echidna out of the shoe rack, and safely relocate him back across the road to the reserve opposite our house. Echidnas are very difficult to move when they don’t want to move. It’s like they have an excellent inbuilt protection system!
Mr Echidna defeated an Amazon box but was successfully deposited in a safe spot in the reserve. He didn’t want to move at first and then a magpie and sulphur crested cockatoo came to say hello!
Finally he was off and moving…..
The kids were all a bit sad they missed Zinnia’s special birthday visitor!
Rounding out the birthday…..
As is usual for us, every day is full of extra curricular activities. Astrid and Soren had squad and Zinnia a swimming lesson. She did get to wear her new swimmers though ;). There was still time for a special birthday dinner out with grandparents and aunts and uncles, and of course more presents!
Zinnia chose the local Chinese restaurant (for the second year in a row) but you can’t beat fried rice and lemon chicken when you are 6 years old!
Totally knackered from an exciting birthday she was out like a light and her unicorn ‘Moonlight’ even had to have the sleep mask on so she also got a good nights rest 🙂
Time for the Sundae Funday….
With a birthday a couple of weeks before a long trip overseas, I wasn’t super keen on a big birthday party. Zinnia assured me that we would just have a ‘little party’. Of course her idea of little and easy and our idea of low effort were not the same!
Astrid and Zinnia and I came up with the icecream theme and it was going to be a ‘Sundae Funday’ as the party was on the Sunday morning.
It was definitely a good day weather wise for an icecream themed party. Mid-November and we were already getting 30 degree temperatures.
We planned a couple of games, plenty of icecream themed colouring in, and an outdoor Sundae bar for keeping the kids caloried up!
Storms were forecast for the day but we set up the icecream bar outside, hoping they’d hold off long enough…….
Zinnia was definitely excited to 6 (finally!) and she was stoked with how her cake turned out. I’d requested an ‘easy’ cake this year and as far as my kids cake requests, this one wasn’t too bad at all 🙂
Sugar and plenty more sugar…..
As it was a morning party and mostly 5 and 6 year olds, I decided to go the easy option with the food for this party. Especially after some of Soren’s more elaborate requests for his One Piece party a few weeks earlier. The old party favourites of chocolate crackles, fairy bread, chips, cheezels and a fruit platter were on the menu.
The adults who were hanging around had some cheeses and dips to munch on if they didn’t want sugar at 10am!
The toppings for the icecream bar were carefully put together by Astrid and Soren, who may or may not have been checking the quality of each by taste testing!
Icecream piñata
Once all the guests arrived and had shoveled a starting level of sugar into their tiny bodies, it was outside for the piñata.
We thought we should get this out of the way before those storms rolled in. Six year olds definitely can give the piñata a good whack. We’ve discovered through many years of parties this is a good way to figure out which kids you want to keep on the good side of!
It always requires at least 3 adults to keep the kids far enough back that there are no injuries from enthusasitic stick waving. Granny ended up making the most amusing faces every time a tiny person thwacked the piñata a bit too close to her!
Once the piñata was mostly cracked open we let Astrid and Soren finish it off so the kids could scramble for the lollies. The dismembered piñata was an excellent party hat for Zinnia and I also had to have a go, apparently!
Sundae time….
The kids did some calming colouring after all that piñata excitment before the next instalment of sugar was ready…..
Astrid, Soren and their cousin Bob thought that since they were all ‘big kids’ they should be in charge of serving at the Sundae bar. A group of excited 6 year olds lined up to make their selection of icecreams, toppings and condiments…..
A few of the adults were also keen to have some Sunday morning sundae, and the make your own sundae was definitely a hit!
It was beautiful Sunday morning weather to chill out eating icecream and we even beat the incoming rain….
Pin the cherry on the icecream
Zinnia was keen to have a ‘pin the cherry on the icecream game’. Luckily 6 year olds are pretty easy to prevent from cheating with a decent eye mask and enough spinning.
The older siblings and cousins may have had additional spins that resulted in Anto’s shirt getting some cherries stuck on it, but the winners were eventually declared and everyone had fun.
The non-ice cream ice-cream cake…..
As we were having plenty of ice-cream in the Sundae bar, Zinnia decided she wanted a traditional cake with an ice-cream theme. In fact the whole idea for the party came from this cake. The inside was layers of vanilla butter cake, with buttercream icicing and raspberry dark chocolate ganache.
After a rendition of ‘Happy birthday’ and the candle being blown out, it was time to crack into the cake and see those lovely pink layers!
The cake was a hit all around, and definitely delicious!
Presents with friends……
To calm the sugared-ones down there was time left for Zinnia to open her gifts from her friends. She got plenty of awesome books, beading, craft and pens and Lego! Luckily once we return from our European trip Zinnia will be keen on plenty of time in the aircon and some quiet activities, so they will all get a good workout.
Zinnia declared the party to be fabulous and was one happy newly 6 year old! We even beat the torrential downpour that went for most of the afternoon, so perfect timing all around.
Happy 6th birthday Zinnia…..
Another year and she has kept growing, but some things never change. Zinnia is definitely still ruler of the house and has her pets, grandparents, siblings and parents under her thumb. She even managed to get Astrid and Soren to get up early on a school day to make her a special birthday breakfast of their own volition! So they clearly adore her, despite their protests to the contrary at times.
Everyone always comments on how happy, smiley and confident Zinnia is. She takes on every challenge thrown at her, but will always tell me she feels a bit nervous about something, but the most important thing is to have a go and do your best! Definitely a wise one 🙂
We are fairly sure that Zinnia has never been quiet for more than 5 minutes at a time. She came out screaming and in a hurry, and nothing much has changed 😛
Her imagination is strong, she loves to play games with all her toys, has more squishmallows and other assorted stuffed animals on her bed than her bed can take. Her creative thinking and stories are amazing and her colouring neater than most adults.
Zinnia is beyond excited about our upcoming European trip. The poor deprived child was born at the wrong time (just before Covid) so has had her international travel curtailed somewhat. Unlike her older siblings she has not been to almost 30 countries (she has been to 6 however), so is very much looking forward to upping her travel and flight count soon. Her long awaited dream of going up the Eiffel Tower, eating ‘dix croissants s’il vous plaît‘ and throwing snowballs in the Swiss Alps is all about to come true.
Six is definitely going to be a year of adventure for Miss Zinnia!
