Lexi's 4th Birthday

Yesterday, my big girl turned 4! 

And since she still has more toys than we know what to do with, she just got a bike. And she was perfectly fine with that. With daddy's schedule being reversed, we did some hanging out at home all morning (with a quick trip to the store in there).

Small "tea" party in the kitchen

 After he woke up, we took her to get a happy meal... I only recently discovered that she'll actually eat their Chicken McNuggets due to a desperate pregnant hunger urge while Father's day shopping at the mall. Then she got to play for a while in the [sad excuse of a] play place there. Then we headed to the movies to see Cars 2. And finished off the outing by "playing" at the arcade...yeah, we just let them run around and push the buttons since they wouldn't have gotten their money's worth if we actually played them :-) Afterwards, we went to a farewell potluck for several families that are moving in the next couple weeks...and our girls were beyond tired and cranky when we left. 

This year, as per request by Lexi, I decided to do a little birthday party for her. She's not had a birthday where she had friends that she picked come and bring presents...but she's gone to them. So I think she was feeling left out. So I invited 5 friends from church for a small party at our house today. 3 showed up... oh well. And I think I put too much thought into planning this thing since all they really wanted to do was play with her toys. They did enjoy the activities (I think) but it all felt like a glamourized playdate. I guess if Lexi thought it was fun, then it was a success, right?

The only reason I was really for a party was so that I could have some more people to help eat the cake. That kinda happened. I couldn't NOT make a cake for Lexi since she's been asking about her birthday cake since her LAST BIRTHDAY...

 So here's the cake I made for her...she insisted that is be Rapunzel... and I had to do some heavy convincing for her to let me do this particular picture since everything else was just too hard.

At the actual party, we had each of the kids make their own pizzas:

 Ed did the "Sink or Float" guessing game with them:

 Then we had them build little volcanoes with playdough:

 They were all really excited when they actually erupted... I think it was a surprise to them!

Then we enjoyed our pizzas and had some cake:

 Lexi was excited to get her presents and I hardly had time to get pictures because she had unwrapped all 3 in less than 30 seconds!

 Sharing some candy she got

 The aftermath...well, from the eating part. I had to do constant cleaning as we went.

I don't think it was really worth all the effort. I think we'll stick to family birthday stuff for a while and maybe do bowling or something (if we do want to do something). I way overplanned this thing and made enough food so that parents who stayed would have food too... so planned for 10, plus our family of 4...and had 3, in addition to us. Oh well.