Ellie's Mermaid Party!

My youngest, my baby, is now 4 YEARS OLD!!!!!  Where has the time gone?  Doesn't she look so old in this picture?

We celebrated her Birthday with a "Mermaid" themed party.  We are going with the redhead themes ha! 

Each of the guests received there very own goldfish!  I think the parents were absolutely thrilled!

Here are all the fish.  We did blue rocks for the boys and pink rocks for the girls. 

Lets just say that the fish didn't last long.  By the next morning all 5 of our fish had passed.  :(  I later found out that goldfish are the "filthy" fish.  They quickly build up too much ammonia in their water and then suffocate themselves from their own waste.  So to keep these little ones alive you need to have a filter that keeps bubbles going.  It has been two weeks since the party and my sister has kept their fish alive, but it is in a tank now.  :)

Here are the Mermaid cupcakes.  I put brown sugar down as the sand and put sea shells around it.  I used Esty for the Mermaid cut outs.  They only cost $2.50!

The boys had swords in their cupcakes with pearls.

When the guests came into the party there were coloring pages. 

Picture with Nana and the Birthday girl!

Picture with Papa and the Birthday girl.

Papa and Grammie

Here the guests are coloring

Then we had a pirate treasure find.  Here is pirate daddy explaining the hunt. 

Each of the kids were given a number and they needed to find their number on treasure boxes that were hidden.

Abby found her treasure!

So did Brynn!

Katie started eating her treasure.

Here is all the food.

Smiles from Jonathan!

Baby Lincoln and his mommy Katie! 

Time for some swimming!

Stephanie and her mommy Kelli!

The pool was packed! It was a perfect day that was hot and the pool was heated!

There was also a water slide up in the backyard. 

The kids all got dried off and it was time for the cupcakes!

Off on the golf cart!

Isn't this so cute?

Peter and Kelli!

Some hula hooping!

Brooklyn with her mommy!

Present time! 

After seeing all her presents, I think we will have a Brave party next year!  :)

Bella and Brynn with their fish.

At the end of the night we lit a lantern. 

Ellie with Jacob.  This is Ellie's first crush.  She gets so smitten over Jacob.  Did I ever tell you that I don't think arrange marriages are bad?!?!!  HA!

The kids all ran after the lantern.  It went so high!

The party was a sucess!  Ellie had so much fun and she truly loves parties!  Can parties be a love language?  If it is, it is definitely my Ellie's love language!  :)

Strawberry Picking!

Last week we headed out to go strawberry picking with the cousins! We actually had all 10 grand kids together for this adventure!

Here is Ellie and Timmy. I don't know why, but every time I took Ellie's picture she posed and said Captain America! 

Here is Ellie and Katie Mae.

Look at all those strawberries!!!!

We had perfect weather that day.  We actually wore jackets, because it was a little cool.

Anderson and Austin walking to go get their strawberries.

Wow, I'm actually in a picture!  My sister took this one!  Again, Ellie posing like Captain America!  Sometimes I would like to have a glimpse of what goes on in her mind.  On a side note, I asked her the other day to close her eyes and tell me of a beautiful place.  She told me that she saw a smoothie place where she was the maker.  Have I ever mentioned that she likes to eat???? 

Running in the fields!

My mom hired babysitters to watch the kids swim in the pool and us adults got to work to make jelly!  We had 4 bushels of strawberries.  My job was to cut all the stems off the strawberries. 

 Look at all these jams!  My mom said that we will really enjoy the jam this winter!

These two were determined to make a lot of jam!

We were determined to keep our cool with the madness that was happening all around us!  HA!  My sister and I can be a little up tight with ciaos!  We are a work in progress.