The Lee Family: Happy Birthday, Olivia!

This morning we had a birthday party for Olivia. It was a bit of a last minute decision that happened to be made on Tuesday morning. For her 1st and 2nd birthdays we had just family celebration that included her favorite meal and cake followed by presents. We figured she was too young to really enjoy having other kids around but figured her 3rd would be perfect to include two of her favorite little friends who we see often - Nicole and Antonio. I texted our friends Stacy and Marco and Thelma and Harvey since we see their 3 year olds often and Olivia enjoys being around them. We decided to make a vanilla cake for her big day since it's her favorite flavor and I wanted to make it from scratch. The party was a bit of a Frozen theme, although we used several left over napkins and decorations from previous parties for Sofia, so it was a little bit of a "princess" theme rather than straight Frozen. On Friday afternoon I started making the cake and CK frosted and decorated it on Saturday morning. It was definitely a team effort and took many more hours to make than expected.

The party included Antonio, Luca, Isabella and Nicole and I set up the kid's table for them all to sit for their meal which was fruit kabobs, vanilla yogurt cups, cheese sticks, and banana muffins. For the parents and Stacy's parents who were able to join us, we made biscuits, scrambled eggs, bacon, fruit salad and coffee. It was delicious! The kids loved sitting at their own table and Olivia adores "Ms. Nicole" as she calls her so I had Nicole sit on Olivia's left and Antonio sit on her right. Sofia and Isabella are big buddies so they sat across from each other. Luca sat with us at the "grown up" table.

We set up "play stations" around the living room that included a horse and barn section, a doll/fairy section, trains and cars section and a drawing table. Sofia and Isabella stuck to the drawing table while Nicole, Sofia and Antonio played with the horses or trains. They all had fun playing in the fabric houses too, which I didn't expect since it's always in our living room and they hardly play with it.

After some playtime we sang "Happy Birthday" to Olivia and had her blow out her candles which she was pretty good at and blew out two of the three! The cake really turned out amazing and was very moist and the perfect amount of vanilla. After cake and ice cream Olivia opened her presents. She opened her present from Sofia first which was a little fairy doll that floats in the water and a stuffed giraffe. She opened the gift from Nicole next and fell in love with her new Elsa baby doll! Then she opened a few gifts from us which included a set of new dresses for her Magi-clip princesses, a set of little fairy dolls, and an Elsa and Anna dressing hutch and dresses for their Anna and Elsa Barbie-size dolls. She then opened her gift from my college friend Sian, a teddy bear and an mini American Girl doll named Isabelle that included two books (which Sofia will be more than happy to read for her). Finally, Antonio left and came back with his present for her - a pink Big Wheel! Her legs are a little too short for her to peddle but she loved it and became good at pushing it with her feet down the sidewalk. She was so excited and loved all of her gifts!

All the kids played for a little longer before they said goodbye and headed home. It was such a fun birthday party and Olivia loved it! What a fun way to welcome 3!

CK frosting Olivia's cake