Kayley's 4th Birthday

Our Kayley turned 4 the other day and we can't believe she is so big now! It's amazing that we have been so blessed with such a smart girl. She is constantly asking me what sound letters make and she loves to read and write her letters! She still has two more years before she starts kindergarten as she misses the cutoff by 20 days, but I'm excited I get my sweet Kayley at home with me for 2 more years! She is a good big sister, when she and Cora aren't fighting and we couldn't ask for a better little Kayley!

She of course is still in love with Ariel, so we had an Ariel birthday party. We were hoping to have a swimming party, but unfortunately the rain didn't hold out for us and it was pouring down during her party! But, we made it work and it turned out to be a great party! She was lucky enough to have a lot of her family there as well as friends and she couldn't have had a better party! Her Aunt Mary even was there from Vegas!! :)

We started the party with some Ariel games. Since we were supposed to have the party at the pool, we had to tweek the games a bit. Instead of doing a game of searching for diving sticks in the pool, we searched for them in the house...a game of "Ariel's Sunken Treasures." Then, we were going to have a fun Ursula game with Aunt Mary in the pool, but instead had to do "Hot Sebastian" or Hot Potato...the kids took a while to figure out the rules of that one, so we eventually stopped the game and just gave all the kids some candy! :)

Then we did some cake and ice cream. I attempted to do an Ariel cake from an idea off the internet. Am I glad that Mary was there to help me with the artistic side of it! I was running late on everything with the party, so Mary helped me ice the cake while I went to go pick up some dinner. She did all the water/sand dune part and I wish I could take credit for it, but she did all that! All I did was bake the cake/sand dune with the holes in them and put on Ariel's fins...which also had to be tweeked as Ariel was a bit taller than we expected. Then I added Melody and Flounder for the final touches. I have to say that I think Mary and I made a good team and maybe we should go in the business!?! Olivia was also a good sport in sharing her birthday party with Kayley. Olivia's birthday is the day after Kayley's, so she had a cookie cake and had a friend, Ikea come with her. They were both great helpers with the kids and of course all the kids adored both of them!

Then it was time for the presents, which was mad caos as there were lots of kids and only one of me who was manning the station of the presents! Kayley hit jackpot and loved all of her presents though! It was amazing how fast my house got crazy messy...it felt like Christmas morning!

One of her gifts was an Ariel bathtub toy, which she had her eyes on at the stores! I'm not sure which kid had the idea, but someone wanted to play with it in the bathtub. They started to do it in the hallway bath, but I made sure all the parents were ok with it and decided to do it in our bathtub and let all the kids put on their suits and climb in...they did want a swimming party to begin with anyway! It was quite the sight and I'm shocked at how many kids fit in our jacuzzi tub! I didn't put theses in a collage format b/c otherwise it wouldn't fit all the kids in the picture. I got a head count and at one point we had as many as 10 kids in there! It was all in all a great party and a great time visiting with friends and family!