Dawna is FOUR!

Can you believe I have a FOUR year old??? Holy moly...

As I was thinking about birthday party ideas, I was saddened to realize that since her "Teddy Bear Picnic" party last year, all but one of the friends that came to her party have moved away... and the last one is moving away in August... so so sad... But then I remembered we were going to be at Burney Falls for the three days before her birthday. I put the idea into her head to have her birthday party at Burney Falls so some of her cousins could come to her party. She went for it and was totally excited and told all kinds of people about her upcoming party at Burney... including, but not limited to, the hard core biker woman who was standing in front of us in line for the bathroom at some random gas station between here and Burney Falls... she was very nice to Dawna and even offered her some French Onion Sun Chips :)

Anyway, Dawna has been really into the "Go Diego Go" show, wherein Diego finds some kind of animal in trouble and then goes on an elaborate adventure to rescue said animal while learning about that animal's habitat, diet, predators, etc. So by the end of the show, not only have you rescued the animal, but you also know all about that animal!

So, for her party at Burney Falls, Dawna led a Diego-style baby lizard rescue! It began with baby lizards who had somehow gotten trapped inside birthday balloons. Each kid had to pop a balloon to get the baby lizard out.
(Not so easy to get miniature lizard figurines into balloons, by the way... Emily is a super-star lizard stuffer!) So, once the baby lizards were free of the balloons, they had to find their mommy and daddy, who were going to meet them at Dawna's birthday party. We had to follow the lizard prints to get to the party...
(This is all the 4-year old kids with their baby lizards -- and of course Larry can't be left out of anything Dawna is doing).

First, they had to identify which tracks were lizard tracks... I had printed out pictures of quail, raccoon, and snake tracks as well... they totally got it right... such smart kiddies!

So the kids swished their lizard tails over to a tree where they found more lizard tracks.
From there, the baby lizards were cold, so they wanted to go sit on a rock in the sun:
Then, a hawk was swooping overhead, so the baby lizards ran and hid under a picnic table:
All that running made them hungry, so they went to look for bugs under a log (for some reason, our group seemed to grow as we kept following the lizard tracks):

Then they used their lizard claws to walk across the log, scared away a raccoon with Diego horns, and then followed mommy lizard to Dawna's birthday party...
...where we sang happy birthday, blew out candles, and enjoyed pre-made angel-food cake :)

Here's the party guests: Hannah, Adele, Dawna, and Nathan... with a couple little brother tag-alongs and mommy helpers :)

But, just so you know she wasn't slighted on her REAL birthday... we saved her big present until we got home!

Dawna loved riding her bike for a couple minutes today... before she came down with a fever and threw up twice... sad way to spend her 4th birthday... but at least she got to enjoy a party and presents and cake all before she got sick... I really hope she'll be better tomorrow...