birthday fun and mermaid party

My kids are obsessed with the "giant play place" as they call it. And thankfully it's rather close to our house so when Lady-LE requested it for her birthday celebrations we couldn't say no! 

 Lucky shot at the end of a slide run. I love this picture! 

 And Daddy even got to meet us there after a long day of work - hip hip hooray!! 

After watching me do L-man's party, Lady-LE has been requesting her own party for quite some time now! She is really such an easy-going girl when it comes to 'favorites' and honestly loves everything, so we settled on a mermaid/under-the-sea theme because it would lend itself easily to her preschool friends who were boys.

I made the invites and the food label/party printables all to match. Lady-LE loves purple!

So I think I need evaluate my method of madness for these kind of things. Planning the menu and all the cutesy names for the food that correlate with the theme, and making all the paper products and images through photoshop really all make me so happy. Like giddy sort of happy. (I've even done it for our neighbor friends' birthday parties too!)  And I could even post a picture of every food item on the table and give you it's cheesy nick-name. But maybe I shouldn't try to do this again when a) I'm pregnant, b) Ry is on night shifts, and c) I'm unforeseeably emotional due to reason a and lack of sleep. 

That being said, I love trying to have fun with the little details. Like the marshmallow-turned-octupus treats, the life-preserver donuts, the crab leg carrot sticks, the photos of Lady-LE all over, and the seaweed crepe paper, and even the stupid salt-dough star fish that I made a week in advance that we didn't end up using because they kept breaking and I was emotionally unstable about mishaps (see reasons a and c above). Sheesh I tell ya. I should know my limitations next time!

But even with those downsides, and with the on-and-off rain we had which kept the majority of people inside, I still loved it and am grateful we did it all. Lady-LE loved watching me make the designs on the computer and would always be so excited when I was "working on my birthday party!" as she would say. 

 We all ate lunch, and tried to play outside for a little bit before the weather made us go back in. 

 And while it would have been way more comfortable and cute to have stations of activities outside, we were still able to pull off the hand-print crabs inside and help me feel like my efforts weren't completely in vain. :)

 It was mostly Lady-LE's preschool group of friends with a few extra plus siblings. And I did have a package of ocean-theme play dough toys for the kids to play with as a back-up plan for the rain. So while it was a little chaotic, they all loved it. 

 Cheesy grin. This girl was SO happy the entire time she would only give me these spastic super-huge smiles. The anticipation of this party about killed her, and she loves crowds and friends so she was in heaven when the time finally came!

 Daddy bringing out the birthday cake! Those are little sand dollar candy molds ... although you can't really tell. 

 When the time came for singing and candles Lady-LE went crazy! Jumping up and down, yelling "I'm the birthday girl! I'm the birthday girl!" and just being so crazy happy! Holy moly she was making me laugh. 

 I love my family ...

 See? Same cheesy smile because everything was so exciting to her! She was literally bursting with happiness! 

She had already snuck one of these adorable fish cupcakes my neighbor helped me with, and was on her second when she was caught! :)

 Opening presents was super fun, loud, and exciting all over again for this little miss. 

Happy Birthday sweet Lady-LE! We sure love you!