Belated Birthday

Like many bloggers, my main reason for starting this blog was to have a virtual scrapbook of the events in my family's lives.  At the end of each year, I will have the entries from our blog made into a book so that we can also have it in print.  As I was looking back through some of the fun times we have had this year, one event was obviously missing.  I cannot believe I didn't blog about Ava's birthday.  How did that get by me?!  So even though her birthday was in March, I want to write about it so that it will be included in our book for this year.  

Ava turned four at the beginning of March.  I started planning her party in November.  I wanted to come up with a theme that would be fun for both boys and girls.  Ava loves inflatables so I thought I would try to incorporate a bouncy house somehow.  After some thought, we decided on a carnival theme.  Ava's "Uncle" Ty (our long time friend from high school) has a gym in Arlington where Ava has taken gymnastics.  In addition to the large gym area, there is a second floor with two large rooms.  We thought it would be perfect for what we had planned and Ty was nice enough to let us use the entire facility for a few hours on a Saturday afternoon.  So now that we had the place, it was time to work on the details--my favorite part!  I started brainstorming about things that you see at carnivals:  games, face painting, balloon animals, popcorn, cotton candy, etc.  The ideas just kept coming and I starting getting really excited.  I booked a moon bounce (with a slide per Ava's request), found a face painter/clown, and discovered an amazing balloon guy at my niece's birthday party.  With those things lined up, I began to work on the food, games, and decorations.  I found a lot of items through Oriental Trading and my mom and I worked to make the games ourselves out of items that we had around the house.  I asked family members and close friends to help out with running the games and other activities.  They were all happy to help and we couldn't have done it without them.  I took some wording ideas from invitations I had seen online and came up with this to send out as the invitation:

Finally it was time for party day!  As the guests were arriving, we had circus music playing but honestly I think it was so loud that you couldn't hear it.  I had the 2 1/2 hours planned out so that the 20-30 kids would come in and visit the ticket booth at the door to get a bag of tickets to use for each game and for food and also a spongy clown nose.   Kevin tracked down a refrigerator box after a couple of weeks of stalking our local Sears, Best Buy, Lowe's, etc (who knew it would be so difficult to catch one before it was broken down!).  Yay for good daddies!  We went at the box with a box cutter and hot glue and turned it into a ticket booth that my grandmother sat in to hand each child their ticket bag.  My mom and I also took a box that held copy paper and wrapped it with wrapping paper, found clip art images of cotton candy, lollipops, popcorn, and animal crackers to decorate it, and tied a long piece of ribbon around each handle on the side to make a "vendor" box for my grandfather to walk around with and pass out the food.  I found the big, swirly lollipops from Oriental Trading, the old-fashioned boxes of animal crackers at Target, rented a popcorn machine to make fresh popcorn, and had a company out west make individual bags with four different flavors of cotton candy.  The kids could "pay" one ticket and get one of each item.  Here are my grandparents getting ready to get the party started--aren't they cute!

After the kids got their ticket bags, they went over to a table to decorate their prize bags.  I got some plain white gift bags at Michaels and ordered some foam animal stamps and carnival stickers for them to decorate their bags any way they wished.

Mr. Mike, the balloon man, made Ava several balloon animals throughout the party. 

He also made her this cool birthday hat.

Before the afternoon was over, "Uncle" Doug ended up with the hat.

Mr. Mike was very popular throughout the whole party.  This man can make anything out of a balloon.  Hands down the best balloon person we'd ever seen.

Here are Ava and our nieces getting their faces painted with the clown from Tinker Tunes & Balloons.

Each child was a winner at each game, of course, and they got to stuff their prize bags with all kinds of treats from the Dollar Tree.  I think I decimated the toy aisle several times in the weeks before the party.  Some pictures of the games we made:

My sweet sister-in-law, Donna, ran the Ring Toss.

Ava's cousin, Lawson, had fun fishing in the Duck Pond.

My BFF, Amy, was in charge of Tin Can Alley.  My mother-in-law, Liz, is also helping out here.

Ava's friend, Aly, is getting ready to do the Ping Pong Toss.

We also had the classic Pin the Nose on the Clown.

Tee Shot (I thought Kevin would appreciate this one because I incorporated his golf tees)

A lollipop tree and a "Guess How Many?" with animal crackers.

After about an hour, we all moved into a smaller room where we had the cake and presents set up.  

Here is Ava opening two of her favorite presents this year.  The twin baby dolls with a double stroller from her cousins Lawson, Addison, and Austin and a beautiful doll house from my mom and dad.

After cake and presents, it was time to go downstairs and play in the gym.  We rented a large bouncy house with a slide but we also had a smaller one for the younger kids.  This is what our child did the entire rest of the afternoon.

The kids seemed to have a blast (I know Ava did!) and I think they were all ready for a nap when it was time to leave.  As a last little thank you for coming, I made cupcakes and decorated them to look like popcorn and put them in individual carnival cupcake boxes.  Each child was given one on their way out.

This party involved a lot of time and planning and work but it was so much fun!  Thank you again to anyone reading this who helped us to make it a success!  I love to plan events like this and I'm always trying to think of unique things to do.  So far, Ava has loved it and she hasn't requested birthday parties at Pump It Up or Chuck E. Cheese so as long as she is happy we'll keep doing it!  I've already got some ideas brewing for next year and it's about time to start planning.  It seems that someone is really into Fancy Nancy right now....

Also, for those of you that were there with your kids and are wondering why there are not pictures of them--my mom took pictures for us throughout the party and later when I got them, I realized that she mainly focused on taking pictures of Ava with her cousins.  Next year, we'll do better at taking pictures of Ava with her friends!!