Esme is four!

Can't believe it's four years since this little force of nature arrived into the world.  A day of drama that was and not just because of Esme! :-)

After breakfast I had another go at making the caramel for my Millionaire's shortbread.  I reverted to my tried and tested method and it worked.  Delicious dark golden caramel poured on top of the shortbread, left for 20 minutes on the cold kitchen counter top then into the fridge to cool as quickly as possible so I could then get the melted chocolate onto it.

No time after that to do anything but get ready to go to Andrew and Nikki's for the family celebration of Esme's birthday.  Cut the millionaire's shortbread into squares before we left and thankfully remembered to take it....and Esme's gifts! 

She was hyper when we arrived.  That's what snacking on jelly babies and fruit pastels does to you!  She had just finished opening her pressies when we arrived (we got held up due to slow traffic as a result of nosey people looking at a break down on opposite carriage! ) She opened our pressies and was happy with them all.  Especially the little *knitted unicorn*

She received two Disney princess outfits and a tutu and she wanted to show us them so we had a fashion parade.  She settled on Elsa from Frozen and wore that outfit for most of the evening (and the clippy-cloppy shoes :-)

We had a party buffet dinner followed by birthday cake (cue lots of singing, candle blowing and hip hip hooraying! :) then Millionaire's short bread.  Esme went into over-drive but to be fair, you could have scraped us all off the ceiling after that sugar fest!!  

Esme got a Baby Annabel doll that is very realistic.  It cries, laughs, giggles, sucks its bottle and dummy, burps, cries tears, everything except poop!  Thank goodness!  Esme and I had fun playing with it although we both got a it fed up with it at the same time.  I suspect the batteries will be out of it by morning!  Oh to be able to do that with the real thing! :-)))

We also played with balloons, Buckaroo (only it was a unicorn) gymnast Barbie (she's very bendy!!)

Esme was hyper at being allowed to stay up past her bed time but we could sense she was reaching her limit so we bid our farewells and headed home before meltdown :D

Just got in and Nikki sent me the photo in extras.  Apparently Esme crashed on the sofa within minutes of us, her gran and papa and aunty Jen leaving. I'm not surprised!  She never stopped the entire time we were there.  Oh to have her energy!

And I am delighted to see she was cuddling the little knitted unicorn we bought her.  Bought from an organisation called *GoGo Olive, which is  a Scottish charity that sells items made by women in Zimbabwe to help them into employment.  It's a fascinating story of how it came to be.  If you're interested you can read about it Here :-))