Weekend Wrap-Up: The Fourth Birthday Extravaganza Edition

Wow!  What a weekend!  The past couple of days have been all about Callie Joy.  I think it was a little overwhelming for all of us, but we also had a wonderful time celebrating her 4th birthday.

So get ready for some fun birthday festivity pictures!

Saturday

We decided to take Callie to her first ever movie in a theater- Frozen.  It was quite the experience.  We almost didn't make it because a certain child who shall remain nameless has a ridiculous fear of automatic flushing toilets and refused to go potty before the movie.  Ultimately we didn't make her go, and she did fine.  The movie itself was good but a little scarier than we were anticipating.  She handled it well, though, and seemed to enjoy it (despite how her face looks in these pictures).  And she had her book there to refer to if she had any questions.

Then it was time to get ready for the PUZZLE PARTY!  I got all the puzzle things set up on the table.

 

Treat bags, cupcakes with puzzle pieces decorated by the birthday girl, and a
homemade birthday puzzle.



The guests started arriving around 4:00.  (Lesson learned for next year- have a morning party.  By 5:00 many of the kids started to lose it).  We had a house full of all stages of baby/toddler/preschool/elemenatryhood.  The list of guests and their ages are as follows, starting with the youngest:

Maya- (almost) 5 months
Frederic- 10 months
Kylie- 1 year
Mabel- 1 year
Stella- 1 year
Donald- 2 years
Sydney- 3 years
Charlie- 3 years
Callie- 4 years
Maddox- 7 years

We spent time in the basement playing with puzzles (and all the other toys, of course).  Then we moved to the kitchen for puzzle piece ornament decorating.

Hopefully the babies didn't feel too left out of the craft time.  They got to play with some toys together.  Maya wasn't too excited about the party hat, though.

Maya and Frederic

We then had dinner where all of us were standing/sitting/trying to wrangle the children and eat as best as we could.

It was a little bit chaotic.

After dinner was, of course, cupcakes! Callie didn't want us to sing, but she did blow out the candles (hesitantly...she was not too happy with all the attention on her). 

Stella was particularly excited about the cupcake.

We attempted to get all 10 kids together for a picture.  The results were...to be expected:

Finally, Callie opened her presents.  Where else, but under the kitchen table?

Once again, she didn't want too much attention.  But the kids had fun hanging out
under the table.

Phew.  Two hours flew by, kids started melting down, and everyone was gone by about 6:40.  I promptly left Chris to handle bedtime so I could do a ride-along with Dan for a few hours.  It was a slow night, but I got to see him pull a couple people over and saw some guys getting frisked, etc.  It was fun to see some of what goes on in a cop car.

Waiting in the car while Dan was getting things ready to go.

Sunday

The big birthday!  We played at home in the morning and she opened her presents from us.

Coo-Koo (our Elf on the Shelf) even got her a present!

The big part of our day was a family birthday party at Boom and Bops' house.  Both sides of the family were there to celebrate our girl.  It was such a fun time, but I did a terrible job of taking pictures.  Thankfully Bops took some, but I still didn't get pictures of everyone that was there.

We got some of our little family unit.

And of the cupcakes and Callie having some sort of freak out at lunch.

No singing again, just awkward silence while she blew out her candle.

And then there was the present opening- this time under the piano.

After the family party we headed over to the Wicks' to hang out with college friends.  Callie played with the girls and Maya showed off her big cheeks.

We ended the day with dinner at her favorite place- Bruegger's!  She had about had it with me taking pictures of her, but I had to catch a quick shot of her and her daddy.

All in all, she had an awesome couple of days and got some awesome gifts.  Thanks to everyone who came to celebrate with us- both yesterday and today.  We are very lucky to have such amazing friends and family members. 

Now, bring on Christmas!