Early Birthday Celebration *Edited*

Since we will have just moved to Kirksville on Rae's birthday (the 31st) we decided to have a birthday party for her before leaving. It was all very last minute, but turned out great. We had it in the apartment complex community center, so I didn't have to worry about cleaning my house or anything, which was great. I've gone to lots of parties in the community center, but this was my first time reserving it. Wish I had done it more often!

When the girls (all girls, btw, no boys allowed at the princess party - besides, she doesn't have many boy friends and Abe moved) arrived I had princess crown door hangers (thank you Dollar Tree) out to decorate with glitter and stickers. They all seemed to enjoy that.



Roy whipped up a cute "pin the kiss on the frog" game, so we played that next and the girls got a kick out of it.





Then we had birthday cake. I'm not very creative with cake decorating, so I just used whatever I had in my "decoration collection" and left it up to Roy, and he did an awesome job.







After that we opened presents. Rae got a lot of good travel type gifts, I think everyone had that in mind when picking what to give her. I really appreciate all the great gifts and Rae is already having a blast with them!




After that we did the pinata (which cost WAY too much money, btw, and was NOT EVEN worth it!) And then the girls all ran around crazy and played with balloons and ate candy!



It was pretty fun, and very un-stressful for me, which is really the most important part! (Seriously, what is the point of stressing yourself out for a 4-year old's party. And I get easily stressed with things like this...okay, I just get easily stressed!)

Anyway, here are some picture for your enjoyment.

**I forgot to mention that Roy and I got Rae a digital camera for her birthday. It's one of those basic, 20 buck ones. She always wants to use ours, so now she has her very own. I'm a little disappointed in the quality of the "view screen" because it's a little blurry and Rae can't see what she's taking a picture of, but I think she'll get used to it, and she's still very excited. Her words: "Now I have a camera of my very own". We wanted to give it to her before our trip so she could take pictures along the way.