Texas Days

Rainbow Pajama Party

Ava had her pajama birthday party today.  She invited all her girl classmates, cousins & a few friends over to the house to play games, eat cake, dance and wear pajamas.  It was 12 little girls total so it was a little crazy but a lot of fun.

Everyone got a sleeping mask to wear for the Pin the Ava game and they all decorated rock star bracelets.

 In typical Ava fashion, she wrangled up most of her friends for an improptu storytime.  We were waiting for everyone to get there and to finish the bracelets and I looked up, and this was going on.  Cortney said Ava was "holding court" with her friends and that seems to sum up what Ava does a lot.

 I bought a glitter tattoo kit online and gave all the girls one.

 After everyone arrived and got a glitter tattoo, we played a few games of musical chairs (please note that yes I am crazy and had Darren help me move all the furniture around/out of the house so that we would have lots of floor space to play for this party).

 We also had everyone play "Pin The Ava."

 It was a 2 hour party and I will say that about 30 minutes in, everything we had planned was done.  Leaving an hour and a half!  So we did some quick thinking and came up with some other games to play like Friend to Friend, What Time is It, Freeze Dance, etc.  I also thankfully had blown up extra balloons and just let them play balloon toss and whatever they wanted.  With the exception of 2 girls, everyone was fine doing whatever.  Those 2 kept asking me what we were doing next...wonder if they do that to their moms all day?  Ha!

As a result, we ended up opening the gifts at the party to kill time (something that NOBODY does any more for some reason).  It actually worked out great and surprisingly everyone sat and watched and had a good time seeing what she got.  We were very proud of Ava's manners because after each gift, she got up and hugged whoever gave it to her and said thanks.  I also just enjoy hearing her honest reactions as she opened them (a lot of "wows" "awesomes" and "this is so cute").

Ava always loves when everyone sings happy birthday.

 The rainbow cupcakes were a little extra work (since you divide the batter into 6 different batches to color) but they turned out fabulous if I do say so myself.

 Ava and some of her friends (Haley, Addi, Avery & Sawyer)

 Here is the party table...I blew up a bunch of balloons and hung them on the wall, used my Ikea rainbow plates and then all the girls got pajama dolls from Oriental Trading and a hair clip that I made.  I wish I were as fancy as the parties on pinterest but you know what?  The kids loved it and you don't need to do so much at this age.  Too much is overkill in my opinion (and expensive).

 Wait was I just talking about people doing too much?  That's right, I did hand make these pinwheels like a crazy person.  They weren't hard but they did take time so I shouldn't say things about people doing too much considering how much time I spent doing stuff for this party.  I got a little out of hand with the amount of balloons/work I actually put into this party and really it didn't look like I did that much.  Ah well it was fun. 



Happy Birthday Ava!!

The day that Ava has been waiting MONTHS for finally arrived!  Her 5th birthday!  She was lucky enough to get to go to school and see all her friends to celebrate.  Darren even surprised her by taking a half day at work so that he could pick her up from school and spend the afternoon with her. 

Ava was very excited that she got to wear a birthday crown at school.  And she was excited to get cards in the mail.

 Since Darren got home early, Ava got to open all her gifts and play with them.  A good portion of her presents this year were clothes and it was funny to see her open those gifts.  She would say "Awesome" and "This is so adorable" when she opened them.  Girl loves her clothes!  Ryan had a blast while Ava opened gifts too...he loves the paper!

After that, we let Ava pick a place to eat out (Flores) and we met up with Me-Mommy there.  Then we celebrated one last time for the day with a candle topped cookie (Ava is not the biggest fan of cake so I thought we would save that for her party).

Happy Birthday sweet Ava...so hard to believe that our baby girl is 5 years old.

Park

It was such beautiful weather out this weekend so we actually headed to the park for once.

Ryan spent most of his time in the swing.  He thought it was fun at first but then eventually decided that he would prefer to be out and moving (shocker).  At that point, we pretty much left since his favorite thing to do at the park other than swing is eat mulch. 

Oh and btw, I forgot to mention in previous posts that his top 2 teeth are coming in (one right after the other) -- think they started coming in the weekend of the wedding.  I tried to snap a photo of them on the swing but of course, Ryan closed his mouth.  Eh.

 It was a windy day!

 Ava loves to climb on these structures.  It's fun to see how she has grown and progressed at the playground.  Still a bit afraid to climb too high (no complaints here) but at least she gets on these now.

A Few More Wedding Weekend Photos

From my phone -- Ava with her curlers in (with Sara). 

 Right after she got her hair done (she looks so proud of it).  Definitely some Texas hair going on here.

 And the kiddos in bed together early in the morning.  Ryan kept crawling up onto Ava's air mattress so we decided they could snuggle for a bit.  I apologize for the poor poor quality of the photo but apparently this is what you get in a dark room using the flash.

Yeah I Do This All the Time

And by this I mean: neglect the blog for a long period of time and then back post everything that has happened since then.  I guess I at least update it from time to time.  Not sure anyone still follows this old thing.

Anyways, new posts start on February 24th.

Hopefully I'll be better about updating this in the next few weeks since 2 special people are having their birthdays soon...can you believe Ava will be 5 and Ryan will be one in just a few weeks!?  Yay!!

Grandparents

A group shot of Granny & Pops and their grandkids.  As usual I took about 10 photos to get this one.