How big is Gwen???

SOOOOO big!

Feels like just yesterday I was playing that game with her. Wow. She's SO old. She went to her last day of 3rd grade today and I cried. Sigh.

These pics were taken last week at her 9th (and a week) birthday party.

Here she is at 4 yrs

Here she is at 2 yrs

Here she is at 6 mos.

Time FLIES. This is so bittersweet! She's a wonderful big, strong, smart, beautiful girl! But she's also my little baby! How'd she get so big? I know I know... stupid me making me eat her vegetables.

Anyway... I asked her today how it felt to be a 4th grader and she said she is a "no - grader" because she doesn't feel like a 4th grader yet. I'm good with that. :)

So we're at dinner with the Shippams and Erholtz's last night, and we're playing a game in the dining room. Lucy's sitting on the floor playing with miscellaneous toys and such. We hear rustling and crumpling, and turn to see what it is and this is what we saw. hehe

Yumm!

Yes ok, I lied...

Here's the birthday party post...

So we had 7 of Gwen's friends come over for her super awesome 9th birthday party luau extravaganza. And I forgot to take pics of a lot. hehe

BUT I do have some!

So to start with... I worked my TAIL off allllllll day. Made a cake. Let it cool. Dumped it out of the pan, and...

So… I tried really hard to turn it into a small layer cake, and… it didn't work.

So then I went to the store again, and got more cake mix and decided to make cupcakes and frost them all together like a cake cuz that looks cool.
It worked.

So then I got to put those aside and got to work on the house.
I made a limbo stick, a fabulous “ALOHA” sign for the front door (which at the time of the pic – today- wasn’t looking so hot), hung streamers from the ceiling, etc… it was awesome! I even bought tiki torches for decoration (fully intending to not light them so I could return them after the party… ghetto, I know)

Anyway… the place looked great. The kids thought it was cool, but my prep really mostly went unnoticed. Good thing everything was on clearance!

I also made 10 little individual pizza crusts and all the toppings so we could all decorate our own pizzas. That was AWESOME. And I missed taking pics of it. But they zoomed in here so fast, decorated them and ditched me faster than I could blink! They were playing something outside… I later found out it was “steal the neighbor kid’s stuff and hide it”. One of the girls’ shoes paid dearly. He threw them into the pool!

SO then they came in and ate their pizzas, Played Jenga - including making "Stonehenge" and domino designs... we had cake and presents...

And then they all played “see if we can beat up the old guy” and wrestled with Mikey until he couldn't breathe! (Does that say something about how “in shape” he is?)
Either way they all had TONS of fun!

Then the glow sticks came out! The girls played for like two hours with them! Two entire tubes of 50each I think! They had so much fun! Then they played Mission Impossible. It’s something like Capture the flag and tag, where the “it” person has to tag you with a flashlight. Mikey called it “Lazy Tag”.
And then we got the noise call from the manager at 10:07pm. Hehe! But we all came inside.

So we played limbo at that point, which was hilarious and pictureless as well. We played it the regular way, and then also WAAAYYY down low to the floor. It was AWESOME to see them try to wiggle under the pole!
3 girls went home because they had other stuff to do the next morning, so the leftover 5 watched a movie (or probably just the opening credits) and went to sleep.

In the morning, we had donuts and fruit, painted fingernails, had a few photo ops, and then they gradually went home.
The aftermath…

And our little beach baby, Lucy.

The party was SO much fun! I would Definitely do it again! Betcha never thought I'd say that!! And at one point, Gwen came to me with that "oh my gosh I love you so much" voice and said "Oh Mommy thank you so much for this party" And I knew it was wonderful and all the work was worth it. I love that kid!

Here you go

Since i'm so tired from Lucy never sleeping, this is what you get.
A regurgitated picture from Jordan's blog.
It is a really cute one so that redeems the post in my mind.

So anyway...I'll be back later or tomorrow to update about Gwen's super duper slumber birthday party!