The Lee Family: Olivia's Birthday Party!

Sunday morning arrived and Olivia is now a 6 year old! We asked her if she felt older and she said she felt the same as she did the day before. We had donuts for breakfast before heading to Al and Jills' house for Meeting. Unfortunately, Grandpa stayed behind with a very sore back, so it was Grandma and the rest of us. Olivia ended up cuddling up on my lap and falling asleep in the final 20 minutes of Meeting. I know the days of her cuddling on my lap are numbered since she's getting bigger and heavier. After Meeting, we asked Olivia were she wanted to eat lunch and she originally said Johnny B's, the girls' favorite burger place. It really isn't my favorite, but today is an exception so we were planning on going there. However, she changed her mind and said Uncle Julio's, which is our usual brunch location. Once we arrived at Uncle Julio's it was really crowded and raining. Olivia saw In N Out, and asked if we could go there instead! We parked and ran through the rain to get inside. In N Out makes a surprisingly delicious burger, so it was a good pick for a 6 year old birthday lunch! Olivia and Sofia both order the grilled cheese, which is also delicious. We ordered burger and fries for Grandpa and headed home.

Once home, we organized all of the party goods, including the plates and supplies, food, drinks, party favor gifts and balloons. We loaded everything into the SUV, gathered up the girls and CK held the birthday cake on his lap while I drove Grandma and the girls to the North Richland Hills Centre for the birthday party! There had been bands of hard rain from Hurricane Harvey down in Houston, so we were lucky to arrive at the Cenre when it wasn't raining. We unloaded all of our party supplies and started decorating the party room. The party was due to start at 3pm and last until 5pm, so we had about 20 minutes before everyone arrived. Sofia and Olivia were so excited to be there and asked if they could go swim. They headed off and we organized the party tables and got ready for guests. Olivia wanted a "girls only" party, but we ended up inviting Antonio, since we are such good friends with him. We invited Olivia's entire soccer team, including Margo who is new to the team and we'd only met once. She included several girls from Mrs. Schultz' Kinder class including Poppy, Charlie, Grace, Annabel, Callie, and her best friend, Hannah, Addie and her sister Makenzie, and Isabella. Makenzie and Sofia are big buddies and it was great having Makenzie there for Sofia to play with. None of the girls on Olivia's soccer team go to school with Olivia, so there were a bunch of different "groups" of girls and then a few solo girls like Isabella and Addie. However, they all played together and seemed to get along really well. They started out playing on the small slide and then moved to the lazy river and ended at the hot tub.

Meanwhile, most of the moms hung out in the party room and talked, since the pool area is so hot and humid and smells strongly of chlorine. When it was 4:30, CK headed to the hot tub and called all the kids to the party room. They enjoyed gold fish, pretzels and watermelon balls before we sang "Happy Birthday" to Olivia! CK cut the cake and served Olivia first. She wanted a piece of chocolate, so he gave her one with a lot of "mane" frosting on it. All the kids loved the snacks and cake with vanilla ice cream and seemed to have had a great time at her party. After everyone was done with their cake and ice cream, Olivia passed out the party favor bags that included handmade unicorn horn hair bands, a homemade unicorn necklace and unicorn stickers, lip gloss and candy. She gave her friends hugs and thanked them for coming. After everyone left, we loaded up all the gifts and left over party things and headed home. The NRH Centre was such a great place to have a party and it was so easy to set up and a fun place for all the kids. Plus, it was great to swim indoors while it rained on and off outside.

Originally Olivia wanted a pool party at our house with a bunch of her friends. We've hosted a number of swim parties for Sofia and Olivia's mermaid party last year was at our house, but this year it just felt overwhelming. So, two weeks before I called the NRH Centre and was so thankful they had the 3-5pm slot available on Sunday, which ended up working out better than a Saturday party due to sports and other family activities families have. Only two girls weren't able to make it out of the 16 Olivia invited! Once Olivia decided on a "unicorn themed party" she and I spent time looking on Pinterest for ideas. She picked out the cake she wanted which I enjoyed trying to figure out how to make and decorate it. I found the unicorn headbands tutorial on Pinterest and loved heading to the dollar store for the headbands, craft store for sparkly white and plain pink felt and fake flowers. It was a lot of hot glue gun use and was really a lot of fun to make all of the cute headbands. For Antonio, I used leaves and blue ribbon instead of the gold ribbon and flowers, trying to make it more masculine. Sofia helped out a lot by tracing the unicorn heads on shrinkie dink paper and coloring the heads before I cut them out and baked them for the necklaces. Earlier, Olivia and I made the party favor bags, using plain white bags and making "eyes and eye lashes" out of Sharpies and adding paper unicorn ears and a gold unicorn horn and then adding flowers. They all turned out so cute and Olivia was a huge helper! The only down side to the party preparation, was the badly burned middle right finger while making the unicorn headbands which ended up getting infected with a staph infection! I ended up on topical and oral antibiotics! It also hurt like CRAZY! But, I was then more careful with the glue gun going forward!

After we got home, we put all of her party gifts on the fireplace mantel and she slowly opened and looked over her gifts from her friends. Sofia was actually out front playing with Antonio and Brandon, so Olivia had a good time enjoying time with us and her grandparents solo. Grandpa made his way slowly downstairs to enjoy a piece of birthday cake while Olivia opened her presents. She got a lot of great things, including several Lego sets, a mermaid dress up dress, a cute pink skirt, and games. She loved it all!

It turned out to be such a fun party and day! One of my favorite parts is to make special things for each of their birthdays and also to make their birthday cakes. Sofia was a little bummed that we hadn't had a birthday party for her, but I explained to her that we've had many really great and unique birthday parties for her, when we've only really done two birthday parties for Olivia. Also, I told her anytime she wants to have friends over to swim, she can. That seemed to take care of her concerns. Olivia really had a great birthday weekend and she was so thankful her Grandma could be here to celebrate with her!

The party set up!