Elise's birthday party day!

We celebrated Elise's 3rd birthday with her friends on January 7, 2017! We had 12 little girls, plus a few moms and extra older siblings in our house from 10-12 this morning and although loud and crazy, it was a lot of fun! The theme was the movie "Inside out" and Dave was a tremendous help in decorating and thinking of ideas so I can only take a little credit. I was SO happy to have him at the party as well. Bailee's 5th party with friends was while he was at COT for the Air Force and her 4th he had to sleep before making our drive to visit Nauvoo so it was nice for him to be a part of it all. We also babysat for some friends to have a getaway the night before the party so we had an extra 3 year old and a 3 month old for the night. We forgot what it was like to have an infant in our room for the night so we were a little extra tired in the morning :) It was fun to have a baby for a little bit though.              

Instead of a pinata Dave thought of hanging these balloons with smarties (Bing Bong's tears in the movie) in them for the girls to pop right at the end and add them to their treat bag. 

 

  

When the girls (Elise only wanted a girl party, no boys she said) arrived we had tables set up for them to color their own Inside Out character masks. 

Bailee and her friend Brynn were so cute with their masks. 

  We attempted to play a game of Simon Says with the faces but some of the girls didn't quite get it. I probably should have explained better at first but I left it to Bailee. They thought they could only hold up their mask if it was called but after a bit they caught on and each them wanted a turn calling out the face for the girls to show. Bailee and Elise had been playing the game before the party multiple times and continue to play with the plates I colored even after the party is over. 

Showing her best disgust face.

Right now Elise loves to play memory and is really great at remembering. We thought we would tie this into the party and split them into two groups to play with some Inside Out cards I printed from online. They all loved it and did really well! 

After memory, each of the girls got to make their own pizza. I remember my mom doing this for kids she would watch on New Year's eve and thought it would go well. We had talked about offering them broccoli to put on it (like the pizza in San Francisco in the movie) but forgot to prep it ahead of time. The girls had fun with it and more than one mom said I was brave to do it :) All of the mom's were a tremendous help through the whole party! 

While pizzas were cooking each of them got to make their own candy necklace with various circular treats and cereals. 

 I have a really great friend, Keelin, and she was sure to help me get some (most) of these great pictures through the party. I made one cake recipe of cupcakes so we had well over 50 in the end plus the chocolate cake I made for Elise to blow out her candles on! We sent many moms home with a plate full to share with their families :) 

Some candies were eaten as their necklaces were assembled. 

We had pizza, carrot sticks and juice boxes for lunch!

Elise was so excited for her cake!

She has been waiting to play with the Inside Out characters I bought for the cake and she was excited to finally get them!

Bailee's shocked face was because one of the little girls pulled down a balloon with smarties... :)

I encouraged Elise to get the card first and Bailee was very helpful in reading each of them to her. 

We didn't snap any photos of the balloon popping at the end but each of the girls got to pop one and add them to their goodie bag before heading home!

 

The aftermath.. I cleaned right away to get things back in order and then laid down on the couch for quite a while! Dave and Bailee finished Harry Potter after the party and spent the afternoon watching the first movie. Bailee was proud of the fact that she didn't think it was scary at all! I think watching during the daytime helps with that. They have now started the second book and she thinks Dobby is cute. 

One of my goals for the year is to be better about sharing on the blog. Life was busy from October to December of this past year with our vacation to Florida, friends for Thanksgiving, family for Christmas and trying to get a little bit of schooling in there for Bailee. I likely won't backtrack to share about the holidays but if you ever come to my house you can see the shutterfly book from our trip to Florida if you want to hear about it :) Dave switched to the day shift and it has been so wonderful having him home every evening. I didn't realize how much of a difference I would feel with him on days so we will be soaking up 8 months this year that he will be on the day shift because he switches every 4 months! Early in the school year Bailee wasn't very motivated to read, so Dave told her that once she learned how to read he would start reading Harry Potter with her. Well the day finally came! They got the book on Tuesday and are already at chapter 7. She is understanding more than I thought she would and she really enjoys the story. So far they have read from the original book but we are borrowing the illustrated version for book 2 and they are so neat! 

Bailee hit a milestone today in math and I was pretty excited! For math this year, we breezed through the first half of her curriculum rather quickly and got to addition a little sooner than she was ready for. We took a break and just reviewed other concepts. We went back to addition today and she grasped it! Her excitement is contagious when she finally understands something, which are the highlights of teaching her. For now, I get to be there when she has those moments :) 

and why not wear a ballet leotard while doing math? 😊 Can you spot what Elise usually does while we are doing school?? Eating... and playing nearby.. therefore the bag of ginger snap cookies and legos spread across the floor. 

Today was also cleaning and prepping for Elise's 3rd birthday party with friends on Saturday! She is really excited to have her first birthday and it has been fun to put things together so far. 12 little girls in our house for 2 hours Saturday morning will be exciting! She asked for a "joy and sadness" party. 

A friend took this and edited using an app called Prisma! Elise is very musical so this suits her well :)

This video goes with the post titled October 8, 2016

All day, every day. I usually share the once in a while events but I thought it would also be good to show you what they do the rest of the time. Princesses and pirates are their favorites to play with and they will play inside and outside with these little toys and role play with them. At dinner we started sharing our "sweet and sour" from our day and Bailee often says that her sweet from the day was playing with her sister Elise. 9.23.16

Playing with my camera and getting some shots of our cucumbers that are growing! They are much bigger now as this was from a week ago. 

Bailee threw a pretend surprise birthday party for Elise. I wish I captured Elise's words when she came into the room because she was so excited! She said "OH Thank you Bailee! It's my happy birthday day! I love my happy birthday day!" We kept my friend's daughter, Paige, for a couple of days while her mom was in the hospital having her baby brother.