Elise Turns 4!

Elise is growing up! She turned 4 this year. In the top left picture, Elise is chatting with her Aunt Gina right before she opens family presents. I decided to get her a Playmobil toy to see how she and Ava would like it - I'm leaning towards starting to invest in toys like Playmobil that are a little nicer and longer-lasting in both quality and play age. Ava was very excited to pick out the items for Elise's cake. She chose a double-chocolate cake, sprinkles and yellow (Elise's current favorite color)frosting for the writing. It wasn't the prettiest cake I've ever made but the girls didn't care at all.

Here is a copy of the front and back of Elise's birthday invitations this year. If you've been around Elise much this year, you know that she LOVES the movie How to Train your Dragon. She has a plush Toothless dragon (the main dragon from the movie) and even pretends that she is baby girl Toothless. She's seen the movie dozens of times and knew she wanted to have a Dragon Party! When Elise saw the invitation I whipped together one afternoon, she asked me if I could change the clothes on there too...too many online Barbie dress up games I guess.

Elise invited many of her church and preschool friends. When they arrived we had the movie playing. They decorated shields (paper plates), put on viking hats (styrofoam bowls with card stock horns and crepe paper hair for the girls), and were issued a sword (kind of dagger-ish) made of cardboard. It was now time for them to do Viking Training. One little girl said quite seriously that she didn't know how to fight dragons - she had never learned that before. ;) I told her not to worry because we'd teach her everything she needed to know. Elise's Aunt Kelly was in charge of taking the kids thru an obstacle course that included jumping on rocks (beanbags) in a lava pit, going through the thick fog (crepe paper streamers), crawling through tunnels, etc.

Just as the vikings finished their training, we had a visit from a real live DRAGON! He came out and was shooting mini marshmallows. The kids put up their shields to block the incoming mallows and then I let them charge the dragon. The dragon was about to die when we showed mercy and let him live. One of the kids told his mom in a whisper that he knew the dragon was actually Elise's dad...I guess we can't fool him! One funny side note: After Chris had finished vacuuming after the party, I asked him if he had vacuumed up any marshmallows. Nope. I guess the kids went around and picked them ALL up off of the floor and ate them. Makes me laugh - I'd have done the same thing at their age of course.

Instead of doing a theme cake, we opted to purchase cupcakes and I made little cupcake toppers from clip art online and some photoshop magic. I ran them through my Xyron and then adhered them to fun foam, then cut them out and taped toothpicks onto the backs - worked really well for any other moms who like to do that kind of stuff. Elise had a GREAT time. Before the party had even started, she was running around our basement saying this was that "best birthday party EVER!!!"
Special thanks to all my family who helped - honorable mention to my SIL Liz's boyfriend Shawn for cutting out 13 cardboard swords.