Abby's Birthday: The Party!

On Sunday Abby turned four. We actually had two parties to celebrate, but one was back in May before she was done with school for the year! Luckily she understood the reason for the split scene, plus, she got cupcakes twice so that was victory for her.

This years party was similar to last years, but much smaller. Don't tell anyone, but the invitations were even extremely similar. Instead of a flower cutout we did a cupcake, but I did use the same template. Work smart - not hard, right?

Our apartment is huge for the three of us, but not huge for ten children and ten adults. This meant a picnic-party-at-the-park. Those are my favorite anyway because we did not have to clean house (frantically), and there is built in play if the kids get bored! The big concern about going all-in for an outdoor venue is that if the weather is cruddy you're stuck with it. We never seriously discussed a rain-plan, either, so it was even better that the weather was perfect for some outside time!

The theme for Abby's party came from her favorite book series - Pinkalicious! In the first book a little girl turn pink from eating too many pink cupcakes with pink icing. I would say that was the easiest party theme ever!

We made a GIANT cupcake from a special pan for Abby's first birthday party. We wanted a utensil-less event, so we did not need the huge pan this year. That left me room to be creative - I used one cup of leftover-cranberry juice and filled the rest of the way with water. It turned out the Perfect Pink:

Anny found a butterfly craft online that we tweaked/improved. This is the final product of the test version:

Even though we said "no presents" the cousins brought one - Abby is in love with what was IN the box as much as she was in love with the hugeness of the box! She insisted on carrying it to the car with no help!

 One of the activities made easy by a childrens-book-theme is that Anny read the Pinkalicious book to the whole gang. They sat, almost completely captivated by the book, for the whole thing. Fun to see that others knew the book and shouted out the punchline at the end, too!

Don't want to make the post too picture-heavy, so one last shot - this is Abby apparently playing with matches waiting to blow out her candles! She helped to make them and so she had to wait a whole 24 hours to eat them, which made them even more special for her!

Thanks to all that came to the party - we had a blast and I think all of the others did too!

For more pictures, hop over to our Picasa page: https://picasaweb.google.com/armonroe

Two more posts coming - one on "Abby at Four" and one with official doc-visit stats. That appointment is not until Monday, so it will drag out. Oh well.