Leah' Fabulous FROZEN 4th Birthday - Part II

Since Leah's birthday fell right in the middle of Memorial Day weekend, we decided to hold off on any big parties until after her birthday. We've found that people are often busy for that weekend and aren't available for a birthday party. That's one of the down sides to having a birthday around Memorial Day, I guess. So we had a party with her neighborhood friends on Tuesday morning and one on Saturday with her cousins and other extended family members. 

If you remember from the last post, Leah requested a FROZEN birthday. So I planned a party with a bunch of activities for the kids to do that went along with the party theme. The first thing was building doughnut snowmen. It was fun because when the kids arrived, I could ask them, "Do you want to build a snowman?" Here's a picture of the snowman I did to show the others how to do them. 

It was nice that the kids' moms or dads were there to help them build their snowmen. It would have been much harder to help 10+ little kids all by myself, especially since Corbin was tired and clingy.

Next we did "Pin the Snowflake on Elsa." I made a bunch of snowflakes and told the kids they needed to stick the snowflake on the poster right above Elsa's hand. The kids actually enjoyed this game a lot better than I thought they would. Some of them came back for a second turn (and would have done more, if we hadn't needed to move on to other things). Leah was getting upset though because she wanted to play the game without the blindfold to make sure she got the snowflake in just the right spot.

This next activity was a much bigger hit than I had anticipated. I had got a bunch of party favor trinkets and froze them in chunks of ice. I also used some ice cube trays to make a bunch of colored ice cubes. I dumped all the ice I made into a big plastic box. Then I gave the kids some kitchen utensils like wooden spoons, ladles, and spatulas and let them go to town. They loved it! They played with the ice for such a long time. They stirred it up and moved the cubes around in the various containers I had. I had no idea they would like it so much. Sometimes they even sucked on the ice (although I would not have suggested that).

And for the last activity I had the kids throw snowballs at blocks of ice. I used Styrofoam balls for the snowballs and had the kids throw them at a pyramid of Styrofoam cups. This game was especially a hit for the boys. They knocked the cups down over and over again. Some of the girls didn't even try it. They were too busy playing in the ice. When they were done with this game, I also let them throw the snowballs at each other like a snowball fight.

I didn't do cake and ice cream for this party. Instead I just gave each of the kids an otter pop, which was perfect for a nice, warm morning.

I don't throw parties for my kids so that they can get presents. In fact, I put on the invitation that gifts were not necessary. However, there were some great friends that brought them anyway. So here's some pictures of Leah opening her presents. And she got some great presents too! The FROZEN pajamas were definitely a favorite. She wears them almost every night. 

Here's just a couple more cute pictures I took while cleaning up after the party. Leah and her good friend, Parker were pretending to go for a drive on the cooler. And Corbin found Leah's snowman from earlier and thoroughly enjoyed eating it for her. Overall, I'd say the party was a great success!

So on Saturday, we did the party again for our family with a few little modifications. This time I did make a cake. I tried so hard to find little FROZEN characters to put on the cake, but everywhere I looked was either sold out or way over-priced. So this was the best I could do for a FROZEN cake. It probably would have looked better with blue words to match the candy "ice," but Leah wanted red since it is her favorite color. We served the cake with a Blue Hawaiian Punch, Sprite, and vanilla ice cream drink. 

The wind that afternoon was terrible. It made some of the games hard to play, especially the snowball toss. And the stuff to build the snowmen was blowing away as fast as we could make them, along with the other snacks I had put out, like the bowls of carrots, pretzels, and raisins. At least the little water bottles (a.k.a. Snowmen in Summer) didn't blow away.

The ice activity was a big hit again. The kids played in the ice for quite a while. I lot of the people we were expecting to come weren't able to make it. Leah's friend, Millie, was sick for the party on Tuesday. So we invited her family to join us for Saturday's party.

Funny thing about these four girls in this picture below...they are all the firstborn in their family and they are all born within a six month time frame. And all four of these girls have a little brother who were also all born within a six month time frame. So Leah is the first of these girls to turn four this year and their four little brothers all turned one already this year. Certainly not planned, but a fun little coincidence.

 

The girls had a fun time playing around while we waited for a few more cousins to arrive. It is so nice that we have this nice, big, shady grass area at our town home. We had plenty of space for the kids to play and didn't have to worry about renting something at a park.

Our last FROZEN activity was the highlight of the party...A Snowball Fight!! I had made a bunch of snowballs using nylons filled flour and tied off like little water balloons. I gave them to the kids and let them start throwing them at each other. They loved it!

Before long the little boys had joined in and so had some of the adults. Ross's aunt, Mary Ann, was having a great time throwing snowballs at everyone.

Before long the kids were covered in flour and everyone had big smiles on their faces!

I even joined in on the fun! My poor camera was covered in flour by the time we were done.

 I may or may not have told the kids to ambush Grandpa!

All and all, another party success! So as I said before, Leah's birthday certainly wasn't lacking in celebration.

After the party, some of my family went out to get something to eat. Since we couldn't decide on a place to go, we ended up at the food court at the mall. Leah and Makynlee were particularly excited about this because we told them they could ride the carousel after they ate dinner. However, we were just visiting after eating when they closed down the carousel for the night. The girls were hysterical that they couldn't ride the carousel and us adults felt bad that we had waited too long after the girls finished eating. Luckily we had noticed these new riding toys downstairs and went to check it out. So we rented this riding animal toy for 15 minutes and let the girls take turns driving around the mall. I dare say they enjoyed it even more than the carousel ride.

Leah' Fabulous FROZEN 4th Birthday - Part I

This cute little girl turned 4 in May!! I don't know anyone more excited for their birthday to come. She had been asking about it for months. I helped her make a paper chain to count down the days until her birthday because I was getting tired of her asking me how long it would be until her birthday. The chain was at least four weeks long when it started. And ever since she saw the movie "FROZEN," she talked about how she wanted a FROZEN birthday. She was, however, very upset when she found out her birthday was going to be on a Sunday this year. She didn't want a birthday on "church day." But what she didn't understand is that having a birthday on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend is actually a great time to have a birthday because it means celebrating all weekend long! As you'll read in this post (and the next), Leah's birthday was certainly not lacking in fun times this year. 

Her birthday celebrations started Saturday afternoon. First, keeping with the FROZEN theme, we took Leah ice skating. 

Just Leah and I did the ice skating while Ross and Corbin watched. I had been many times before, but it was Leah's first time. She was really excited to try it out, but it proved to be harder than she thought it would be. So I just held her up as we skated around, which was harder than I thought it would be. We did have one big crash that hurt both of us pretty good. And after that Leah didn't want to skate again until we could get the skating walkers to help her stay up on her own.

Once we  had one of these walker things, we both had a lot more fun. Leah loved that she could skate around all on her own without falling down and that I could also push her around with it and we could go really fast. This definitely made the skating experience a lot better. She was all smiles the rest of the time.

After skating, we picked up Ross's mom and went out for dinner to Leah's favorite eating out place: Del Taco. She was really excited to get some nachos to eat and play on the indoor playground.

After dinner, we went to Provo Beach Resort (another one of Leah's favorite places). This is the third year in a row that we've gone there for her birthday. The kids had a great time playing in Toddler Town (a little indoor playground). Corbin enjoyed it as much as Leah did. He even went down the slide all by himself over and over again.

Then it was time for ICE CREAM! We love the ice cream shop they have there. Ross and I always get their Southern Blackberry Cobbler flavor. YUMMY! Corbin was a pretty big fan of it too! Leah would have made her Grandpa Leslie proud by choosing the Strawberry flavor. It was loaded with real strawberries. He would have loved it so much. And Grandma Leslie got her favorite, Mint Chocolate Chip.

And no trip to Provo Beach Resort would be complete without a few rides on the carousel! Leah even convinced her Grandma Leslie to ride with her one time.

On Sunday (her actual birthday), we went to church where the kids sang happy birthday to her in Primary. She even wore her "Birthday Girl" ribbon to church so that everyone would know it was her birthday. Several people stopped to talk to her in the halls and wish her a happy birthday.

After church, my parents, Lyndsee and Taysom stopped by on their way to Price to see Leah for her birthday and give her a little gift. Later Ross's mom came over for Sunday/Birthday dinner and for more birthday celebrations.

After dinner she opened her presents from us and Grandma Leslie. Corbin, who wasn't much into opening his own presents, wanted to join right in helping Leah open hers.

As you can see, this girl got pretty spoiled for her birthday. She definitely wasn't lacking for birthday presents.

After presents was birthday cake! We even Skyped with my parents for this part so that they could sing and see her blow out her candles too. They were with most of the rest of my family, so lots of her Tucker cousins got to wish her a happy birthday on Skype too. All and all, I'd say that was a great birthday celebration, but the fun didn't stop there...