Birthday Party

I can't believe our little girl is turning 4! For her party this year she had two requests: she really wanted to have a "big kid party" (i.e. no parents, just friends) and she wanted a princess cake. Our local library has a collection of about 100 cake pans that you can check out, so I took Tori to the library and let her pick the one she wanted. She picked one that looked like a princess and told me she wanted her to have yellow hair and a pink dress like Sleeping Beauty. I was a little nervous about making the cake since I haven't really done much in the way of cake decorating, but in the end I was pretty proud of my creation, and most importantly Tori absolutely loved it!

Above is Tori and her friends about to sing "Happy Birthday". From left to right - Siri, Megan, RoWan, Tori, Andrew, Claire, Anne, and Anna.

Below everyone is eating the cake. I think it tasted pretty good, since they all had 2 or 3 helpings (I'm sure their parents loved the sugar high they were on when we sent them home).

Above - Tori opening presents (with some help from her very excited friends) :).

Below - All the kids decorating foam crowns or stars with foam stickers.

Above is James during the party. Our normally very sweet and easy going baby decided that he wanted to cry during most of the party and had to be held the whole time (thank goodness John was there to help run the show).

John spent the night before the party blowing up a million balloons to put in the basement. It made it seem a little more worth it when Tori's friend, Anna, said to him during the party, "This is the best party ever, I've never seen so many balloons!"