LO's 5th Birthday: Part 3

Look out, folks! It's another photoriffic post! :)

The morning of LO's 5th birthday began with... birthday pancakes!!! Not the greatest looking "5" but seriously, have you ever tried to flip a pancake in the shape of a 5? It took me two spatulas and a lot of hand-eye coordination! ;)

LO was super happy about her birthday pancake... Here she is making another birthday wish!

We had her birthday dinner at Red Robin, complete with singing, a hot fudge sundae and a balloon! When we got home after church that night, we did have a little ice cream cake with a candle and sang "Happy Birthday"to our girl, led by Chase!

The plan was to continue her "birthday week" with a trip to the beach today (Friday). Unfortunately, it was gonna have a heat index of 105° F, so we opted to scrap the beach plans and come up with a new strategy for our family day o' fun!

We started the morning with a special treat: breakfast at IHOP! We very rarely eat there, but I knew LO loved their silly pancakes, so we headed that way for a super yummy breakfast!

After breakfast we headed to a nearby fun park for a ride around the track on the go carts! It was Chase's first time and he loved it!!

See??

Seriously. Loved. It.

:)

We went inside for some arcade fun, too!

Believe it or not, this is LO bowling... ;)

Told ya!

Chase's turn!!

Giddy up!!!

One of mommy's favorites...

After the fun park/arcade, it was time to head to the pool with family! It was crazy hot, but the pool was refreshing enough.

After the pool, our day o' fun continued at the movie theatre to see Ice Age: Continental Drift. We had a great time and all enjoyed the movie!

You know you were successful in having an awesome, fun-filled day when your kids look like this at 6 o'clock in the afternoon!

We had a great day enjoying time together as a family. I think it was much better than 7 roundtrip hours in the car to sit on the beach in 105 degree heat! And although LO was slightly disappointed when we told her we weren't going to the beach after all, I think she managed to have a decent day anyway. ;)

LO's 5th Birthday: Part 2

Today's post about LO's 5th birthday party will be very photoriffic! Enjoy!!

The night before her party, we went to get her very first spa pedicure! Not surprisingly, she loved it, just like mommy!

Pretty toes, complete with a flower on her big toes! :)

On her actual party day, I made little welcome sign for the party on the front door:

Party favors! Ones for the girls and ones for the boys. I also included a little stuffed unicorn and stuffed horse for our littlest party guests who were under 1.

I tried to avoid too much candy in the party favors, so I used stickers, a magnet craft, a bracelet craft, a not too annoying noisemaker, a light up ring, and a striped candy stick. I did throw in one of my super sugary marshmallow creations, which sort of put the candy quota over the top. Ooops!

The boy favors were very similar, only there was no light up ring and more masculine stickers and crafts!

The yummy white chocolate-dipped, sprinkle-laiden jumbo marshmallows!

The birthday banner that I'm actually quite proud of! This was a lot of cutting shapes out by hand! The cool thing is I plan to reuse it for her future birthdays... just replacing the unicorns with other party-themed pics. :)

I somehow managed to overlook taking the obligatory food pictures, which sucked because I made a killer fruit tray complete with the fruit dip inside a hollowed out pineapple! It was beautiful and tasty! I also included a veggie tray, chips with homemade salsa and pretzels. It was just some light snacky food since the party was after lunchtime.

During/after snacks, I let LO open her gifts. She was super excited to get a rainbow unicorn Dream Lite! Thanks, Aunt D!

Here she is opening the game Twister -- which I thought would be a lot of crazy family fun with hubs and I and the kids. My niece thought it was pretty funny, too! :)

More gift opening...

I have no idea what led to this face...

Girl likes her some Tangled stuff!

Gramma and her mad wrapping skills... it took the whole team to get this one open!

A Barbie unicorn! Score!

LO reading the name of the new book mommy & daddy gave her.

Here she is looking through the book she made without realizing she made it! I'll write a separate post about this one because I think it is such an awesome gift/keepsake!

One of her most favorite gifts... a bench from Gramma & PaPa! She loves it (as does her brother)!

After gifts it was cake time! This wasn't my best work ever, but I managed to get over it. It tasted good and that's what mattered most. ;)

Time to sing!

My big girl!!!

Make a wish!

Mmmmmm! Cake!

After cake and ice cream, we headed outside for one of LO's birthday requests... a piñata! I didn't think about it beforehand, but I sure felt sorry for that sweet little unicorn who was getting the life beat out of her. Those big, innocent eyes... ((sigh))

LO was up first:

Chase gave it a go, too!

More party guests taking turns beating the crap out of a unicorn!

She's at it again! I think all the kids got at least 3-4 chances before we had to give up and make hubs rip it open!

Thanks to hubs, the party could finally continue! The funny part was that the candy inside the piñata was beaten to a powdery mess while Mrs. Unicorn barely had a scratch on her!

Following the piñata, it was POOL TIME!!! Unfortunately I wasn't able to get a single picture at the pool... :( I was busy doing my hostess duties but from what I could see, everyone had a lot of fun!

So tomorrow is LO's actual birthday... the weeklong festivities shall continue! :)