Birthdays!!!

This week of April is always a marathon week for me. Fernando and our two girls share this week in birthdays. Fernando starts it out on the 14th and then we hit the next two on the 16th and 17th. It is always a trick figuring out how to make each day special and avoid eating way too much cake and ice cream (yes. . .it is possible. . .at least for little kids and my backside). It turned out that school was not scheduled for Friday and so it made for an easier arrangement of friend parties and family parties. Talia who is in love with Princesses especially Rapunzel from Tangled (aka the only Princess movie she has seen) kicked things off with a Princess Party:

After everyone was gathered and finished dressing their paper doll knight or princess
, we ate a royal feast of "gold and jewels". I just had my daughters favorite foods like macaroni and cheese to look like gold, green and purple grapes for jewels, and royal carrot scepters. While the kids ate, I read to them the book Falling for Rapunzel by Leah Wilcox. In the book, a prince tries to get Rapunzel to throw down her hair so he can rescue her, but she mishears him and throws down random objects from her room instead including silky dresses , dirty socks, cantaloupe and a swine (instead of silky tresses, curly locks, rope, and twine).

I told the kids that we needed to help out Rapunzel. We sat in a near by room to go on a "Rapunzel Hunt" which was simply an adaptation of going on a "Bear Hunt".



I tried to help them imagine jumping over gorges, walking over bridges, cutting through tall grass, and snorkeling under a wide stream.

I luckily had my mom here and she hid upstairs ready to throw down some of the things from the book like socks and dresses. I told all the kids that the Queen had special treasures for each of them but that they were hidden in the mess that Rapunzel threw down to the prince.



After the kids found all their treasures, we went to decorate sugar scepters that they could use magically to change the color of their frosting. I wanted to read another favorite book of Talia's called Alice the Fairy. She uses her magic wand to do all sorts of things. Unfortunately, I couldn't find it. So I just had the kids use their scepters and funny magic words to repeat as they stirred in the food coloring.


Next came tower building for Rapunzel. Good thing they didn't connect the fact that the tower was actually a bad thing. I needed something to fill the time with that would work well with 3-4 year olds.
Accepting one little girl who wandered most of the party, the kids were really cute and seemed to really get into each random activity. They would listen to the books and even enjoyed putting together puzzles that one friend gave as a present.

Thank heavens for my mom's help with all the prep work including cleaning the house. Let's be honest, she was rockin' that orange rhinestone wonder! Also, great thanks to a wonderful mom that stayed so we could have all the really cute pictures. Happy Friend Birthday Talia!!