Arabelle's 5th Birthday

Arabelle was so involved with planning everything to do with her birthday this year that it was exhausting.  We had a little family party and ate spaghetti and she wanted blueberry muffins for the dessert. 

Grandma and Grandpa came and brought her horses in a barn for a gift, and she got this nail polish, which was her only gift from John and me since we were paying for a big friends party.

Memaw got Arabelle this vet costume/kit and it has already seen a lot of use.

  Arabelle started planning her birthday in full force 6 months ago.  Since then she has made countless lists and rounds of homemade invitations.  She went through tons of ideas:  costume party, games party, angry birds party.  She finally settled on "exercise party", which I convince her could be done at the place where Jeffrey has gymnastics.

Here are just a few of the lists that she made.  Keep  in mind that I had to dictate every letter to her.

She made her own invitations, which I never would have allowed with her meticulously planned and themed ballet party of last year, but as I said, this year Arabelle needed to be head party planner.

Those are 2 that Arabelle made on the top row, and the 2 on the bottom row are ones that Charlotte made in imitation.   The squiggles are her "ABCD's".  We glued a printed insert inside with all the necessary details, and then Arabelle decorated the fronts.

That's Arabelle on the far left.  She was really excited to wear her fancy rainbow glitter gymnastics leotard.  Of course, one of her first guests asked her "why she was wearing her pajamas", but she didn't seem to mind.

 It was a super fun party.  There were 2 instructors there that did the parachute with the kids and also a fun obstacle course, and then they had time for free play.  My only complaint is that we had to be super strict with time.  We got exactly one hour in the gym area, and a half hour in the room with tables for cake and ice cream/presents.  It all felt a bit rushed, and a few kids were quite late, so they got almost no time in the gym, which made me feel bad.  I will go ahead and mention that it was $100 to rent out the facility, but I have spent close to that on home birthday parties buying lots of games/crafts/party favors to entertain the kids for an hour.  Of course, not having to get my house perfectly clean (while under stress of also planning a party) was priceless.  And as I mentioned, she only got one very small gift from us, and I really don't think she would have minded had she gotten nothing, she just wanted that party!

Arabelle had lots of guests, but mostly she played with Emery.

Emery, Arabelle, and one of Arabelle's admirers, Braxton.

Scotlyn and Valin, to whom Arabelle is apparently engaged to be married.

More guests:  Sara and Xander from church, and Jeffrey of course.

Charlotte was very pleased with the cake and ice cream.   I wasn't sure how many guests would show up, so I had 2 cakes.  The first one was planned by Arabelle:  chocolate with chocolate icing, blue sprinkles, and green frosting letters.  She wanted the letters to say, "I love to exercise!", but I did encourage her to change it to "Happy 5th Birthday!"  We also had a round vanilla cake with strawberry frosting and 2 kinds of ice cream.  We did eat over half of each cake, so I was glad I had planned extra.

The gymnastics staff had Arabelle sit on this block and she got to call up friends one at a time to sit by her while she opened their present.   Halfway through I realized it was horrible because she was calling up her "favorite" friends first and then leaving the other kids until last.  So then I just had the last 3 kids all come up at the same time, and it was wild so I wasn't able to write down what give gave what for thank you notes, which quite bothers me, but oh well.  So if we were to do a party here again, definitely would do presents differently.

I was a little worried that no party could live up to Arabelle's extensive planning and expectations, but she seemed fully satisfied with the experience. Almost all of her guests game, and she actually got some really great gifts including a card making set, a set of 8 "Frozen" puzzles, and lots of Princess Sophia items including jewelry, 2 ceramic princesses to paint, and a doll.  She has been playing with all of them.