This year marked a memorable year- Morgan turned 5! This girl was lucky enough to celebrate her birthday numerous times too! We had a party in Florida and then a few weeks later we celebrated at home on the night of her birthday. It was pretty low key and we let her pick the dinner menu which was Chinese food and we followed it up with a giant cupcake! And I was even nice enough to give Elizabeth her own cupcake.
That night we sang Happy Birthday and gave her a few presents from us- Two new Zhu Zhu pets and some other things that I can't even remember! But we new her big day was that weekend. Since Morgan started at her new day care her social calendar became pretty full. She was invited to four or five other birthday parties, so she caught on quick that her turn would come. We told her she could have a party, and since we just got back from Disney World we decided to keep it fairly low key. I asked her what she wanted to have (since we were doing it at home) and she said she wanted her friends to come over, she wanted a pinata, balloons and cake. Seemed pretty easy so we set the date and invited all the girls in her class.
In the end we had about 10 girls RSVP and Morgan was so excited. We came to find out later that she was talking up her party at school to all the parents. Since Morgan and Elizabeth are normally one of the last to get picked up Morgan realized she had the attention of nearly every parent in her class. So she made a pretty detailed birthday list for each parent. She was so detailed that she even had different items for different parents! Luckily the parents thought it was funny.
So the day finally came (we had the party on a Friday night) and I had everything set up. Morgan picked out the pinata and helped me fill it with candy. She also helped make the goodie bags for her friends.
Against my better judgement I got horn blowers for the party. I am still finding horns throughout the house...sometimes the girls find them first and scare the living daylights out of me when they blow them. Every year I also try and make the girls a special cake for their big day. I asked Morgan what kind of cake she wanted and her response was chocolate. I dug a little deeper and she said she wanted a Strawberry Shortcake themed cake. After searching around the Internet for a good idea I landed on one and was able to create this for Morgan's party.
I thought it turned out pretty great if I do say so myself- and all the other moms were pretty impressed. The kids thought it tasted great so it was a gold star in my book!
I also let Morgan pick the menu for the evening. She wanted corn dogs, ketchup, chips, applesauce and pizza. Seemed like a weird combination, but we went to Costco stocked up on bagel pizzas and corn dogs and the kids loved it.
Before we ate we turned the kids loose in the backyard which we tried to turn into a water park of sorts. We have several sprinkles and water toys and I bought a new inflatable pool for the backyard. The kids had a great time playing in the water, and playing on the playground.
They even tried to turn the slide into a water slide!
Elizabeth was even able to invite a friend. One of Morgan's classmates has a younger sister who is in the same class, so Elizabeth was able to invite Annie along for the fun.
After splashing, playing and eating it was finally time to break the pinata! Morgan had done this at other parties so I figured it would work out well. This poor pinata took so many hits! I'm not sure if it was our bat, or the fact that I might have overfilled the thing with candy, but it took forever to open.
After what seemed like an hour Morgan finally hit the pinata and it's head came off. At that point I called it quits, and ripped open the pinata. From there the kids found every single piece of candy that made it onto the ground.
After the pinata there was present opening and more playing in the basement. All the kids had to try out the new stuff they got Morgan! All in all she had a great party and was pretty happy- which in turn made me pretty happy.
So since I figured out that I can make a hardback book out of all of these blog posts I am trying to make more of an effort to capture the funny moments of my girls. So here goes...
Our monumental year of events just keeps going! This August- August 10 to be exact- Morgan started kindergarten. Morgan has known she was going to her "big girl school" for awhile. We drive by it almost every day so she has been pretty excited. She actually was confused why she didn't get to go to her new school the day she turned five. We probably should have explained a little better, because we did tell her she got to go to her new school when she was 5- we just didn't say how long she would be five before she went.
