This year Abigail had much more input into the planning of her party which was nice. My goal again was to keep it simple and fun and to stick to our rule about number of guests and mostly homemade. I hardly took any pictures, but at least I captured the most important moments.
When her 4 friends each arrived, we had some ballerina tutus and crowns set out that they could put on if they wanted. Then they basically all went outside and sat at the Play Doh table most of the time. They were all having fun, enjoying all the colors and tools, and didn't want to do anything else.
The friends she invited this year were Addie, Kristin (not pictured), Savannah, and Makinley. All girls from her class, although Makinley is a year older and wasn't in her class at the time, but we had seen her recently.
One of her friend's big sister is a Cougerette and offered to teach a little dance routine to the girls but they just wanted to freestyle to whatever song was on.
As soon as the music was off, they all went back out to play with the play doh.
This is the best and only picture of the snacks- again, all easy stuff. I loved that cake, it was so easy and fun just sticking things onto it. We always get two or three types of icecream from our local icecream place, Henry's for the party. I love that touch- we love Henry's and shopping local.
Family photo! She insisted on putting her Elsa dress back on. This is a dress we hid for about a month until she kept asking for it and we pulled it back out again. I never thought I would get annoyed at seeing an outfit on my kid- it's a really pretty dress! But when it's the same thing every other day....."I love you"- speaking of my helper, she asked that I type that right there.
After her friends left, we had present time with the grandparents!
There is a feeling of pressure around parties these days that I'm digging in my heels against. I love planning parties and coming up with all of the details, but I don't want it to feel stressful or not worth it.
We've been to parties that felt so overwhelming with the activities, and going from one thing to the next every 15 minutes, or the ones at that damn Chuck E Cheese. I need a nap just thinking about it! I understand the urge to have the 'best' of everything, and thinking that kids just want all the flashy stuff, and why not, because it's a party... I felt like this party might have been a little too plain when I compared it to other's.
However, I don't want to spend a ton of money on a party when the biggest lesson I learned from this party was that kids are happy just playing with Play Doh and dancing!
Simple won for the second year in a row!
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