Natalie's Birthday

Natalie turned 5 on August 14. Her Gammaw was here to help her celebrate. When I asked Natalie what she wanted to do to celebrate, she told me she wanted to go the Pearl Tower. So, that is what we did. We invited some of our friends and went to visit the Pearl Tower. We had lots of girls go with us. Natalie also had a dress made just for her birthday! Mom and I found sound really cute material with "barbie" on it that Natalie just loved, so we had the shop that has made some of my best copied clothes at the Fabric Market make it for her. She has it on in all of the pictures. Only in China!

Luckily it was a decent day for looking out of the tower. Some days it is very smoggy and hard to see. You can see from the picture that the sun was bright that day. From left to right in the outside picture are Grace Fansett, Jamie Miller, Natalie Bramer, Jessie Kovie (in the front), Lauren Miller, and Hannah Fansett. Up top, the kids had loads of fun goofing for the camera. The best part of that trip was the museum underneath the tower. It was very interesting and the kids loved it! The last time we went, we didn't even know it was there so we totally missed it.

After the Pearl Tower, we went to Buddy Bear Restaurant in the Times Square Pudong Mall. A themed restaurant geared at kids. The food was so-so, but the kids loved playing in the big play area inside, so it was perfect. I bought an ice-cream cake that cost me $50 (yes in American!) from Haagen-Daz and sent all the kids home with a big sugar buzz!

Even though Natalie is here in China, it turned out that all of her family sent her gifts! Since my mother had come over, she was able to bring most of the gifts

from her grandparents and aunts & uncles. So, she had quite a pile of gifts to open. She received mostly books, though as usual her Aunt Angel sent some good fun stuff (lots of stickers and little toys which she loves). She also got two new Webkinz from Angel and Tony, a frog and a chihuahua. She of course loved that. Her Aunt Jennifer got her a bunch of Magic school Bus books, which are science oriented. We have read two or three of those already. Excuse me, she has read them. She now tells me that she doesn't need me to read to her. Her Grandma and Grandpa Bramer got her a really cute outfit for fall (though she insists on wearing the jeans already as they have red hearts on the legs and she thinks she looks grown-up!) and two books from Beverly Cleary: Ramona the Pest (Ramona Quimby), and Beezus and Ramona. I talked Natalie into letting me read Ramona and it is pretty applicable since it is about Ramona starting kindergarten. But she is reading the other about Beezus on her own. She still has some struggle with some of the vocabulary, but she is getting about 70% of what she reads. Gammaw also gave Natalie a gift of a manicure. On the Saturday before her birthday, her and Gammaw went to the spa here and had lunch and their nails done together. Natalie had little, teeny, tiny, flowers painted on her fingers. Again, only in China AND only when Gammaw is visiting. The Ayi got Natalie some Chinese / English books and has been studying with her. That will come in handy this year for sure. Tom and I bought her some more books and her own Mp4 player. She has been getting car sick and can't read, color, or play her L-Max in the car and she was using Tom or I's player, so really you could say the gift was for us. But I have to say that one of her favorite gifts came from our driver, Zhong Biao. He bought her a Barbie with 4-5 extra outfits. She loved it! And since it was really the only toy she got, thank goodness. Pappaw gave her $10 which I converted to RMB and she went to Toys-R-Us and bought a little Barbie, Kelly. She told us that in Barbie Land, Barbie could have babies without a husband! Out of the mouth's of babes... So overall even though we tried to keep it low key, she got quite a bit. It was a big day and we tried to get her to bed early as the next day was the first day of school. At 8:05 when her head hit the pillow, she was out within 5 minutes. I guess she had a happy birthday!