Unicorn Party!

We hosted a unicorn party for Avery on Saturday afternoon. It was so much fun! Avery LOVED it! 

Decorating her cake:

I ordered an awesome party pack from Amazon complete with everything I needed to host a party, including the tableware, cake decorations, invitations, favor boxes & candles!

I ordered some unicorn themed  party favors including these stamps. 

Here's a look at the party boxes & we filled them all a little bit with candy before the piñata time. 

The unicorn banner came in the party pack. I bought the "pin the horn on the unicorn" from Target. It came with a felt eye mask & sticker horns. 

The cake topper was part of the party pack. 

Avery had an identical set of hanging decorations for past birthdays but they didn't last much longer than 2 birthdays. So I ordered a new set but didn't want to hang them from the ceiling at church, so I taped them on butcher paper and hung it up over a children's church poster. 

In the empty spaces I filled in pieces of a quick impromptu birthday interview which I'll post below. 

After "pin the horn on the unicorn".... this was a blast! Every kid played (young & old!) And even one of my friends!

We also bought a piñata at Target and filled it with assorted chocolate & candies. The younger kids got to hit the piñata three times per turn and the older kids got to hit once per turn. Everyone loved this!

Three kiddos were super sweaty & pumped after the party! 

Avery's birthday interview:

***

Avery is 5 years old!

What makes you laugh: Popping a balloon.

If you had one wish, what would it be? To see a real unicorn. 

What's the best time of day? Wednesday. 

What do you like to learn about? Math. 

Favorite food: Applesauce & broccoli. 

Where do you like to go? McDonald's (I was thinking more like "the beach" but to each their own, I guess. P.S. I can count on one hand the number of times we have been to McDonald's in the last 2 years. )

Favorite thing to do: Have a birthday!

What's your favorite book? My Little Pony

What do you do really well? Play with horses. 

What do you want to be when you grow up? A ballerina.

 

***

I hope you enjoyed this little peek at her special day!

Until Next Time,

Much Love, Reba

Noah is 7!

Noah woke up today as a 7 year old! He's spunky and sweet with an easy smile. He's doing a fantastic job being a first grader especially a virtual one! He loves to play outside & can also easily entertain himself with toys in his imaginary world.  He plays well with others and can be perfectly content playing alone. He's very creative and currently likes drawing and creating abstract art (by rearranging his toys to represent other things etc.). He thrives with compliments and likes to know someone is always nearby. He's the perfect middle child that this family needed. 

He still loves all things garbage truck, school bus, and rescue vehicles. In fact, his party theme today was "school bus!" 

He chose apples, Oreo Thins, and Ritz crackers for party snacks in addition to his cake. 

We played inflatable bowling...

And tic-tac-toe / checkers...

And bean bag toss! 

For birthday dinner, he chose takeout pizza. We had a great day!

Happy Birthday, Noah! I love you! And I love being your mommy! I'm so glad God created you & put you in this family. I pray you seek Him earnestly & always. His way is best. Always keep your spunk and your joy. These things are so uniquely "you." Love, Mom

Until Next Time,

Much Love, Reba

Our Own Little Christmas Party

Since the boys are doing virtual school, they missed out on having a Christmas party with classmates so they were a bit bummed out.  We had a "Zoom" family Christmas party/STEAM event last week on Tuesday night but it wasn't really a party at all. It was more of a "sit down and do an engineer activity over Zoom with other 3rd graders, etc."  Sweet Michael thought it was going to be more of a party and wore his pajamas & brought his Christmas stuffed animals to the Zoom call. Needless to say, he was disappointed and my momma heart was breaking. It was then we decided we'd throw our own Christmas party as a family. I added some items to my Walmart grocery pickup and we planed to have our party on one of these days that we had left leading up to our official Christmas break (we're officially out on Wednesday).  

Aaron has been working lots of long hours (like 16 hour days) and even had to work yesterday and is at work today too. So... we needed a little holiday cheering up & decided today was the day. I handled Children's Church by myself this morning and we knew that once we got home from church, then our official obligations of the day were over & we could think of things to do at our party. It was just me and the kids, so we planned it for after Avery's nap. I found some Christmas plates & trays and arranged some treats & planned out some games. I really wanted to make it as special as possible for them. Around 2:15, I started some Christmas music & invited them to choose their special snacks & make their hot chocolate order and we'd get started!  We played four games. The first was "Pin the Nose on Rudolph." The next was "candy cane fishing." The third game was improvised-- I hid 6 candy canes in the backyard & the kids each got to find two. They LOVED this! We then returned inside and we played a dice game to draw a snowman (where each number on the dice equals a snowman part to draw and the first one to draw a complete snowman is the winner! Michael won!). 

Our party lasted about an hour, which was the perfect time frame. We're watching "The Polar Express" while I write this post, and we'll have ham & bean soup for dinner. It's turning out to be a great winter day...it'll be perfect when Aaron gets home!

Here's some photos of our fun:

This is my improvised fishing pole (see the candy cane on the end?). 

This is our cup of canes to fish from. 

Until Next Time, 

Much Love, Reba

Michael's Super Nintendo Mario Party

 Originally, Michael's birthday party theme was going to be "Poison Kirby" but alas, that proved to be too difficult to find supplies.  So he changed it to Super Nintendo/ Mario.  This, I could do.  I have done a Mario party for three out of the last 4 years (year 4, year 5, year 8).  We kept it simple with the invites-- partly due to Coronavirus concerns and not wanting to expose ourselves to too many avenues of exposure, and partly because school wasn't in session yet and we didn't have classmate information. 

We invited our church family and our extended family.  All three grandparent sets were able to come, as well as two uncles, an aunt, a girlfriend of an uncle, and two cousins.  It was a very fun day!  We opted not to do a bouncy house this year (again, covid concerns of little kids jumping on a slick surface where sweat and inevitably some spittle would flounce about).  We had our party at the church building still, because people could spread out and because I wouldn't have to bend over backwards to clean my home to the desired level that I feel is necessary when non-family is coming over. 

We kept the decorations relatively simple.  We used solid red plates, multi-colored cups, and a Funfetti cake with homemade buttercream frosting.  I bought Mario themed balloons from Amazon, as well as a Mario "Happy Birthday" banner, and Mario cake toppers.  Michael scrolled Pinterest with me one afternoon and we picked out some food ideas. 

We had cheese balls as "Bowser's Fireballs" (all labels I printed myself at home), strawberries and green grapes on skewers for "Piranha Plants," blue jello with Cool Whip as "Mario Sky," and labelled soda bottles (Dr. Mario [Diet Dr. Pepper], Mountain Boo [Diet Mountain Dew], Koopa Kola [Diet Coke], and Rex Root Beer [Diet A&W], and regular Coke as well).  We also had classic potato chips (that I forgot to label as "coins"), crunchy Cheetos, and the cake with tinted green frosting for grass and the Mario characters set atop in the order Michael provided. 

We bought a few "yard games" on Amazon for party participants to play.  We bought a bean bag toss game, an inflatable bowling set (very popular with the 2 and 3 year old crowd), and a giant table-top checkers set.  The kiddos also played with the foosball table in the Children's Church room and the toddlers enjoyed playing in the nursery.  All in all it was a super fun day and I'm so grateful to our family and our church family for stepping in and making sure Michael had a fantastic 8th birthday!

Until Next Time, 

Much Love, Reba

Avery's Unicorn Party

 Avery is all about some unicorns, so it wasn't a far stretch to choose that for her 3rd birthday party!  To be fair, pre-Coronavirus, we had tossed around the idea of having her first "friend" party since she's made a little toddler friend at church.  This party was going to be a painting theme with little pallets filled with sprinkles and white frosted cupcakes for the kiddos to decorate themselves. However, we decided to forgo that idea the closer we got to her birthday when we realized life as we've come to know it for the past 5 months isn't changing anytime soon.  Avery has only had "family" parties, so she wouldn't know any differently this year.   So we put the painting party in the back of our minds (and in our "Save for Later- Amazon cart") and we'll use that idea in a future year.  We decided on the unicorn theme since we knew she'd FLIP OUT and it was easy to find things to work for a low-key party.  Everything came from Amazon and Wal-Mart.  

I grabbed this decoration set on Amazon and originally thought of hanging them on the mantle, but decided last minute to string them from the dining room light and we LOVE how it turned out!  There's ten different pictures, each attached by a metallic streamer.  The pictures include a unicorn cupcake, a unicorn face, two unicorns, some shooting stars, some unicorn heads, and a cloud with hearts raining down. 

The cake is a Funfetti mix with homemade buttercream frosting.  The decorations were from an Amazon pack.  Aaron skewered some toothpicks to the felt base to get the crown to stand up correctly. 

The unicorn plates were a Wal-Mart find!

When we called Avery into the kitchen to see the cake, she was so excited!  We put on her unicorn headband (also a Wal-Mart find) and she held up a unicorn plate for the ultimate unicorn compilation photo. 

Her party was great!  We had three sets of grandparents and most of each couple set could come!  We also had an uncle in attendance too!  She loved singing "Hap Birt-day" and eating cake and opening presents.  She got lots of cute girly things, but wasn't overwhelmed.  She did decide though, to try out her mermaid swimsuit and skirt, Little Mermaid sandals, and hold her unicorn toy while I turned on "Home Alone."  Yes.  "Home Alone."  But you know what?  That is what makes up Avery-- lots of color, an eclectic vibe, and a misplaced seasonal movie. :) 

Until Next Time, 

Much Love, Reba

Noah: 6 Years Old!

Noah turned 6 at the beginning of January, but we had his birthday party this weekend so that his school friends could come.  It might just be me in my emotional mommy state, but I can already see a big difference in his attitude from being a 5 year old to being a 6 year old.  (Not to say the tantrums are gone, because they're not... but he's being more helpful around the house which is nice).

He's VERY much into all things police these days, so that seemed like the perfect party theme!  I searched something like "police birthday party ideas for kids" on Amazon and a whole slew of things came up!  He helped me pick out most of his party supplies and all of his favors.  Here's a glimpse of the invitation.  It was SO CUTE.

On his actual birthday, I let him open one of his gifts right away and then we saved the other ones for that night when grandparents came over for cake.

That night, we had a simple yellow cake with cream cheese icing.  He added the black sprinkles at the end.  He wanted to add all of the Halloween sprinkles but I advised against. He had also picked out bright pink strawberry icing and after tasting a tiny bit, I convinced him to use that only in the middle and to use the cream cheese frosting on the outside of the cake.  I used a badge cookie cutter for my template on the decoration.  Fortunately, Noah thought it was great and that's all that really matters. :) 

When assembling his party favors one night this week, I was so impressed with how cute they turned out!  Noah picked out little sheriff badges, handcuffs, and little notepads (for writing tickets of course).  I grabbed some cellophane bags off of Amazon and bundled the items together to make 12 little favor bags.

On Friday night, I made sugar cookies and on Saturday morning I added some yellow food coloring to cream cheese frosting for the tops.

The tablecloths, forks, spoons, two different plate designs, and napkins (and all the favors) were all Amazon purchases.  Noah picked out a variety bulk bag of chips, and we also added a fruit/cheese tray to the table and Capri Suns closer to the start of the party.

Just like for Michael's party, Noah requested the bouncy house, so we blew that up and had it indoors.  This is actually such a great idea no matter what time of year a party occurs.  In August, it was great for Michael's party because we were in the inside with AC.  For Noah's party, it was cold and slightly rainy, so having the bouncy house indoors was a great idea.

Noah had a few kids from his class show up, then we had our friends from church and all of the grandparents again.  It was a good time to connect and meet some new people and allow all of the kiddos a safe place to play and run off LOTS AND LOTS of energy!

I'll share Noah's birthday interview, and subsequently Michael's nearly-seven-and-a-half-year interview since he thought it sounded like so much fun that he wanted to do it too. :)

I continue to be amazed at how much joy these kiddos find in life and in the special events like birthday parties.  It reminds me to find such joy in my own circumstances.

Until Next Time,
Much love, Reba