Birthday Fun & An "UBER" Mess

I am not sure Sarah would consider it to be a success (I didn't have any wrapping paper or party games) but I want to say THANK YOU to everyone who made yesterday such a great birthday. I received cards from my grandma in Mesa, THANKS GRANDMA! and my grandpa, phone calls (I hope the stitches went OK, Leslie--I'm still waiting for the blog post), emails, comments on the blog, visits, gifts (I'm sorry I missed you Em!) and couldn't feel more loved/remembered, so THANKS EVERYONE!
(By the way, that is NOT a guilt call for anyone who didn't remember--it's a thank you to you, too because I am the WORST person in the world at remembering birthdays, so it really makes me feel better)!

As a birthday gift from me to anyone who has been patiently waiting for some good old nostalgic "Ellie" type messes, here is one that happened a little while ago that I never posted:

Rachel has had two great loves since she started to walk: the dishwasher and the lazy-susan. Well, I had been blogging (my naughty indulgence) and had Sarah and Rachel with me by the laptop, but I wasn't paying enough attention and the two of them slipped out of my sight and went into the kitchen. Rachel opened the lazy-susan and pulled out the flour and pancake mix. Then, instead of playing with them in the kitchen, she took the whole thing into the family room. She had a great time using the powder as a miniature "sand" pile, but then had the brilliant idea to make it more like a beach-or maybe she wanted to make pancakes-but either way, she went to the dishwasher, found a cup that had been upturned in the wash cycle and poured it all over her mixture. When I found the mess she had poured more flour on top and I didn't realize the extent of the damage. I took a picture thinking I could just vacuum up the mess and write a cute blog post, but when I pulled out the vacuum it made an odd high pitched sound and when I backed it out of the mess I found the flour "mud" that had been created.
After MUCH scrubbing, I was able to get the mess (mostly) cleaned up, and life continued on as usual, but here is a picture of a small corner of the disaster-there was more in the middle of the room, but I thought it would be a "cuter" picture if Rachel was in it.