Emma's Party

WARNING: You may be tired after just reading this post....

I had to start with this picture. We started the morning by decorating and blowing up a ton of balloons. Nate popped one about every 5 minutes and cried for about 2 minutes after every pop. I guess we haven't had a lot of balloons around him lately. His sad little face was so cute. I kept stapling balloons to the fence and Nate kept coming behind and pulling them off. He is the biggest little helper.

When everyone got here we decorated loot bags inside and made balloon animals. (Note to self..always buy 3 times as many balloons for the animals, because every kid will pop his multiple times). Then we headed outside for a lunch of hot dogs watermelon, chips and lemonade.

Finally is was time for the carnival to begin. Here the kids are at the duck pond.

I guess I missed the kissing booth. You had to guess how many Hershey kisses were in a jar and the winner got the jar. Then there was the fortune telling booth where you got a fortune cookie that told your future.

Here is Madison getting her face painted. I loved it when one of the little boys asked me to paint Spiderman on his face and a Spiderman hat on his head. I'm good, but it is just face paint...so no hats.

This is the booth that inspired the whole party. Emma wanted a fish pond at her party. Later she clarified that she had wanted one with paper fish with paper clips on them that you fish with a magnet, but once she saw the prizes for this she said this would work instead.

Here is Jason helping with the bean bag toss.

One of the biggest hits was the balloon shaving. The kids loved squishing the shaving cream all around before they shaved the balloons.

The birthday girl hard at play!

They best part about shaving cream is that it is a clean mess.

Which leads to the most important part of an outdoor Texas party. The sprinkler! We had a small one running the whole time so kids could run through it if they were hot and use it to get clean it.

After we shaved the balloons we turned the area into a dart area...the kids loved popping the balloons.

Yup, it was a lot of fun for all ages1

That wasn't the end...we closed up all the booths and opened up the last one...The Pie Toss! Here is Jake waiting for the first one.

I love his face in this one!

At least the whip cream tasted good. Emma later told me she thought I was going to make real pies for it and not just cool whip. Seriously? I'm not really Martha Stewart.

Kyla scoring a big hit!

The end result. The kids had a blast doing it. I think it was probably the highlight of the party. Especially when Jenny took a turn and all the kids were chanting for her to get him!

While Jake scraped off some of the layers of cool whip we had a water balloon tossing contest.

Then it was time for cake! The top was a red velvet and the bottom was a rainbow chip.

At this point most of the face paint had been washed off by the sprinklers...but I love Nate's expression in this one. He was so excited about the candles. We had cake with sherbet floats, plus cute colored straws that matched the rainbow sherbet.

Then it was time for the water balloon fight! We blew up about 300 balloons.

Even the little tiny guys loved the water balloons and Nate kept asking for more last night.

Then while we dried out Emma opened presents. Then we ended with goody bags with popcorn, circus animal crackers and clown noses.

It was a great day and Emma loved it. Thanks to everyone that helped out.