Birthday Party!!!

Yesterday was Elise's birthday party. You should know that she is HEAVILY involved in the planning of her parties, down to every little detail. Her party this year was an American Girl doll party and each guest was asked to bring their favorite doll or stuff animal.

Elise was dressed and ready hours before her party. She even dressed up her dolls in matching outfits that her Omi made. (The fabric Omi used for the doll dresses was the same fabric she used to make the flower girl outfits for our wedding...how cool is that?!? I feel like I'm looking at my nieces ready to spread flowers at my wedding again...and they are now both in college!)


The excitement level ramped up when Grandma brought over the cake she'd made! Elise could not believe this beautiful doll was really a cake!


We had all the crafts and projects ready to go, just waiting for little girl hands to complete!


The girls finally arrived and we got down to some serious crafting. Each girl made a cozy sleeping bag for their doll or stuffed animal.

That's my sister who joined us for the party. My sister has 4 sons and has never attended a little girl party! :)

I don't know what we found so funny, but I never like pictures of myself and I thought this one was decent. I'm sure we were laughing at something goofy a friend said! There was a lot of laughter because these girls were silly!

Here are 2 of the finished products. The tiger and dolly were all warm and cozy!

We then moved on to make necklaces for the girls and their buddies.

It took a lot of precision and a great deal of concentration! But they created some beautiful bling for themselves and their dolls and stuffed animals.

Cake and lemonade (Elise's choice of drink...yellow, not pink as you might suspect!) were next. The girls all helped blow out the candles on the cupcakes. We couldn't figure out a way to put the candles on the beautiful doll cake...

Then it was time for presents! Wowza, did Elise get some great gifts. (This is one big difference between boy and girl parties, in my experience....boys could care less what they give one another so Moms usually either pick out the gift and/or get a gift card, girls REALLY get involved in the picking out of gifts and were just as excited about Elise when she opened their carefully selected gift!)

We finished the festivities by playing a few rounds of American Girl bingo. For a quick and easy game, the girls all really enjoyed it!

Here's the girlie gang. Most of the girls are in Elise's class this year. I'm so thankful she has such a good group of friends. The girls all have fun with each other and are very supportive. One little girl (non-Chinese) had even written out Happy Birthday in Chinese in her birthday card to Elise. I'm sure we'll be seeing many of these little girls over many times throughout the summer!

And what did the boys do during the party? They went to see the Star Trek movie then played with some tool Perry picked up (his Father's day gift that conveniently went on sale the week of Mother's day.) Some really expensive hammer thingy. And in my mind, that means he needs a new project to try out his new tool, right?!? Hmmm...party out of the way, new tool in hand...the possibilities are endless!!!