Three!: The Birthday Party

My little party-planner-in-training came into her own this year. She was very excited about her party, from her theme (Princesses, naturally, and we picked her dress out weeks in advance.) She loves the dollar store, and picked out her plates and decorations and the all-important party hats. And her own tiara. We are big on tiaras in our house.

We needed chocolate cupcakes with pink frosting and sprinkles for our guests. I made the cupcakes, but Gwen was all about the sprinkles. Pink and purple sparkle sugar, and pink sugar balls that crunched in everyone's teeth. She even let Adessa help, which meant that the sprinkle distribution was ... a little uneven, shall we say? But the cupcakes were still pretty.

The kids had a great time playing around and wearing their hats. No, really, Ryan's having a blast.

And Elvi got to play with Baby Eliana. You know she was happy.

Then we sang the song (see the end of the last post) and ate the cupcakes and then, oh yeah, there were presents. Lots and lots of presents. (I should be writing thank-you notes right now, actually.)
And then the party was over, pretty much. Until this happened:

This is the new princess dress that the Brauns gave her for Christmas, complete with matching gown for our cross-dressing lion. He's a very good sport, you know.

And then this happened:

Those are the lacing beads from Adessa. Rutherford is helping.

And this:

Which pretty much summed up how Gwen felt about the whole day.

Easter. No, really, Easter

The Easter Bunny, with a little help from the grandparents, was very very good to Gwennie this year. (Please ignore the weird looking creature in the window - there were no glowy-eyed animals stalking my child that morning, it's just the light off the grill or something.)
Plus, I still love me some dollar store, folks - that's a Dragon Tales coloring book, which has displaced Elmo in the current Hit Parade of Gwendolyndom. (And whose sweet little lilt of a theme song will.not.get.out of my head. It starts up within seconds of waking, especially at 3 in the morning.)

Gwen also enjoyed the bunny family, especially when it came to eating them. For the record, she likes to start with the feet first. Daddy , on the other hand, goes straight for the ears.

Mommy just likes the fact that hers was dark chocolate.

I was a little concerned that I wouldn't wake up early enough to get all the eggs hidden outside, but I did just fine. Once Gwen chose her hip outfit,

the hunting began. This was definitely the best part for Gwen, at least until we got to the Senko's party.

There's one!








And another!















After a brief discussion about which dress to wear (Gwen loveslovesloves her pink poodle dress*, but I wanted something, you know, Eastery, even if she did need a shirt underneath) we went up to see Auntie Daphne and Uncle Mark and Jessie. They throw a huge Easter Egg hunt, with bills of various denominations tucked off in corners. Gwen had her own area to look in, but she also got help from the adults after Jessie and Alan had finished up. There was ham and potatoes and all the usual feasting going on, plus jelly beans and candy. Gwen was pretty thrilled with the whole day.
And that, my friends, concludes our coverage of Easter 2009! Stay tuned for more Gwennie news soon!
*Which is a little sad, because it is too short for her now. She's growing like crazy.
PS: This Blogger stuff is cool, but it still messes around with the spacing something fierce. Please know that this post made sense when I previewed it, but I'm tired of honking around trying to get things to line up. Sigh.