Strawberry Shortcake 5th Birthday Party

Layla chose Strawberry Shortcake for her party this year which I was excited about since I LOVED Strawberry Shortcake when I was little.  Layla's party was almost a month after her birthday, but she wanted to have her party in our new house and waited very patiently for her party.

 

Strawberry (and her pals too) sure has changed a lot over the years! 

Quick family pic before the party...(Layla made all the kids lots of pop bead necklaces/bracelets/anclets to be fancy for her party which you can see by the jewelry they're wearing:-) )

 Layla's delicious cake made by Brooke, the girl that makes cakes for most of our family parties now because we all love her cakes so much!

 Apps, drinks and cake at our desk (the bulletin board wasn't finished in time for the party)...

 We moved in a week before her party, so I was very busy that week (with the help of my sister) trying to get our house in birthday party condition!  I told guest not to look in our bedroom closets, I may or may not have shoved some extra things in our bedroom closets:-).

I love that as Layla gets older, she too thinks it's fun to think about what decorations we can use for her party.  She helped me arrange all of her SS stuff.  I have just a few dolls left from when I was little and they too were on display.

 For birthday parties, I try to serve food that the birthday kid likes, but with Layla (and Gibs too), that's pretty much anything.  We had chicken casserole, corn soufflé, cheesy potatoes, applesauce, bread and a few different yummy salads.  It was a very "yellow" meal, but very tasty and Layla said it was very appropriate for Lemon Meringue (Strawberry's friend).

 Layla asked me to sit outside by them so I did and was the only adult eating outside, but that's okay--it's what the birthday girl requested:-).

 Greta and Harper had cute matching Strawberry Shortcake outfits, but never got a picture in them since Harper went to sleep during lunch. 

  Layla loved her birthday balloon and I can't believe how many weeks after the party it lasted!

 I took the traditional pic of her with her presents before opening, but forgot to take one after with her gifts!! Oops!

 This Minnie dress for her American Girl sized dolls I actually crammed into my suitcase on the way home from Disney in January.  Greta LOVES shoes (and 'shoes' is one of her favorite words to say) and has loved playing with the cute little Minnie shoes from this set:-).

 A new bigger princess bike from Grampy and Gigi!!  She loves riding now with no training wheels.

 A new big wheels from Grandpa and Grandma and they also got her a big girl Razor scooter.

 With her cake and FIVE candles!

 I had such issues with her birthday outfit.  There is pretty much no Strawberry Shortcake stuff in stores.  She happened to see this Lemon Meringue skirt at TJ Maxx awhile back and really wanted it for her party. I then got her a white shirt and ordered a sheet of Strawberry and friends iron on decals to put on it.  She was so excited to choose which girls would go on her shirt and in what order and was excited for us to make her short a couple of days before her party.  I've done iron ons for many birthday parties in the past and have never had problems with them before, but could not get them to work this time.  I ended up putting this one Strawberry Shortcake on this tank top she had and had to call it good even though it was such a faded Strawberry on it.  When I first started having issues not getting the iron ons to stick (they would just partially stick--like very faded and then I tried to fix it and made it smear and it was just a mess) she cried that her birthday party was ruined.  Thankfully she was happy with the end result of this tank top! 

 She cut all the pieces of cake for everyone...

 Stick the strawberry on Strawberry...

 My little Gibbers...

 Em woke Harper up from her nap to get a picture of her with Greta, not realizing that I had stuck Greta in bed already.  Harper was not so thrilled by that decision.

 Harper happier...

 Movie time after the party...

 Trying out her new bike...

 Family pic infront of the new house...

 Apparently Gibs was tired out from the party...

Just A Typical Day In Our Castle

My two little princesses and my pirate prince had fun dressing up tonight.  So funny to hear what their minds think of.  Layla and Gibs love pretending to be a princess and a prince.  They tend to their babies.  Run away from danger.  And attend many balls.  Quite the aventures they have.  And Greta follows behind.  :-)

Country Livin'

The kids have been enjoying the country life.  After church we went to Grandpa and Grandma's for lunch followed by some time playing by the pond. We then came home and played some more outdoors.  The kids had fun walking in the back and side yards (we just planted grass last week so for the most part, they play on the deck or the driveway) to pick wildflowers and blackberries.  We felt pretty country tromping around our yard in rainboots:-).

 I'm not a bug lover myself, so I don't get too close to tall grass :-)...

 The kids were so excited about all the berries we found but had a lot of them gone before we even came inside:-).

 Layla LOVES helping out in the kitchen.  She really is very helpful.  She's great at getting things I need, putting dishes (that she can reach) away and cutting food up.  Unfortunately we didn't move in on time to have a garden this year, so all of these veggies are just from Meijer.  She had fun Saturday night helping us cut up the veggies for dinner.

 The other night, I had no idea that Gibson wasn't in  his bed until we went upstairs to go to bed...

Movie Time

We don't have a tv in our living room yet, so when the kids need some down time, they've been watching movies in the play room.  I thought it was cute last week that the little girls wanted to join right in for movie time...for about a minute:-).

5 Year Stats

Layla had her five year appointment today.  When we went in last month for Greta's 18 month check up, I asked the nurse for Layla if she had to have shots at her 5 year appointment.  I figured it'd be better to warn her ahead of time if she did:-).  She did not need any, so that was a relief.  She was nervous at her appointment and therefore gripped my hand pretty tight walking in, wanted me to keep Dolly in my purse for her during the appointment, and gave VERY short answers to their questions.  Here are her stats.

Weight: 34.25 (20th%)
Height: 42.5 (50th%)
BMI: 10th%

So she is petite, but we already knew that:-).  I think that's about the same %s as last year.  Pretty sure Gibs has passed her in weight:-).  On our scale at home he's about a pound more. 

I'm so proud of our little five year old.  She's such a sweet, caring, nurturing little girl and it has been so much fun to get to see more and more of her personality develop over the past five years.  I love her infectious giggles and her determined personality.  I love how she is so naturally respectful of her things and how much she treasures little trinkets.  I love how she makes her bed every morning (and sometimes mine while I'm in the shower!) without me ever telling her to.  She is such a wonderful big sister--a good influence (for the most part of course) and good at keeping her brother and sister in line:-).  I will truly miss her while she's at school every day next year!!  Love you Lulu!!

Girlies

Harper happened to have the shorts that matched my girls' tops that they wore today, so I thought it was a good opportunity to take a pic of the girls:-).

 When I watched Haper last week, these two thought it was pretty fun to sit on the bench together:-).

Finishing Touches

On Friday, they put all of our hardware and our crown molding on all of our cabinets and they also put shoe molding up and started on our porch posts.  This week, the excavator needs to come in order for us to pass final inspection (since we have some drop offs where more dirt needs to be brought in).  The painter will need to come to do touch ups, we neeed mirrors and closet organizers, and they need to add some things in our peaks. Other than that, we're about done!  Right now, they said to plan on getting our keys to move in on Thursday morning. 

 

The back of the bar will be painted white.  It didn't get painted originally because we changed our minds and decided to put beadboard up.

 Greta loves to "cheese" for pictures:-)...