Ice Cream Party

In addition to the beach trip, we had Leah a small ice cream party on Saturday to actually get to see her grandparents.  Our neighbors came also as well as my friend, Shelia and two of her girls.  Still can't believe my BABY is SIX!!!

Homemade ice cream, Blue Bell, brownies, toppings galore :)

The Birthday Princess

with MawMaw

With Papa (who was being silly because he doesn't like his picture taken)

With Poppy

Beach Celebrations

Last week held mine and Charles's 15th wedding anniversary as well as Leah's 6th birthday.  Since Ella got to go to Snow Mountain for her birthday, Leah wanted to go to the beach.  It's my favorite place to be so that was an easy yes!  We left on Wednesday and managed to get in 2 hours of beach time before the rain moved in.  On Thursday, it rained ALL day.  We managed about an hour that morning but that was it.  Of course, when it was time to leave Friday, it was a BEAUTIFUL day.  Despite the rain, which ruined a great deal of fun in the sun, God did give us many blessings.  As you will see in the pictures below, we got to see a rainbow over the ocean.  Pretty fabulous.  Sadly, Leah's dolphin cruise was cancelled Thursday, but God allowed us to see quite a few dolphins playing in the sea in front of our hotel.  And, we got to enjoy Friday so it wasn't a total wash out!

Leah's Kindergarten Graduation Celebration

I can't believe my little baby graduated from Kindergarten.  We had a small celebration with just a few family and friends.  I made homemade pizzas, cake and gave her a diploma.  I also made this cute banner that I couldn't seem to get a good picture of.  She is obsessed with dolphins so her gift was a Barbie dolphin trainer :)  Didn't get a picture of that either :(  The important thing is that she had a great time and we celebrated her accomplishment!!

Leah's Big Day

Leah got her ears pierced today.  She was super excited and wanted me to make sure and post her picture on the blog :)

Dolphin Tale Party

I can't believe it, but my baby is 5 !!!!!  She wanted to have a Dolphin Tale party.  If you haven't seen the movie, you need to....(this movie started Leah's love of dolphin everything).

The Invitations

The invitations were not my idea.  I must give credit to my neighbor, Stacy, and her creative brain :)  She came up with the idea and helped me put them together.  We made them with my Cricut.  I especially loved that they were unique and not like any I've seen.  You pull the dolphin up and it has the party information on that card.

The Decorations

This is a balloon wreath that I made for the front door.  I found inspiration on Pinterest, of course ;) and wanted to have it done for Ella's birthday but didn't make it.  There is a number 5 with her name on it that I can take off and replace with whoevers age/name.  

The centerpieces of the table were hurricane vases filled with green crinkle paper packing filler and then dolphins and a number 5.

Ok, so sandwiches are food and not decorations, but I just wanted to show that we made ham sandwiches in the shape of dolphins.  I found a sandwich cutter at Wal-Mart and when you use it to cut the sandwich you get two dolphins and a heart.  Cute, huh?

I also had blue Hawaiian Punch in a drink dispenser that had a chalkboard tag around it that said "Ocean Water" and I had decorated around the bottom with sand and seashells.  I know I took a picture but perhaps I dreamed it as I can't seem to find it now.  Big sigh.......

The Cake

We had a cake tragedy this morning.  Oh my.  I can laugh now, but was on the verge of tears this morning.  The story goes like this.....Ella and Leah had their friends Eva and JB spend the night last night.  I got up at 6am and started cleaning and getting ready for the 10am party.  I asked Charles to go get Leah's dolphin balloon filled with helium.  He said he would rather me do it so I asked him to get the kids breakfast started (I had bought Pillsbury cinnamon rolls).  I always put my finished cakes in the oven to keep them from little fingers in the icing or some sort of accident or something.  I always do this.  See where this is going??  He didn't think about it until he went to put the cinnamon rolls in the preheated oven.  You've heard of twice baked potatoes??  Now we had twice baked cupcakes!!  Luckily, the cupcakes themselves were fine, but the icing was a different story.  It had changed colors and gotten so hard and cracked I couldn't even get candles to go through it.  When I got home and found out, panic ensued.  I took a shower and prayed.......prayed that God would help me be loving and forgiving to Charles because I know he didn't ruin them on purpose and that He would help me to salvage Leah's cake.  So, I scraped off the hard, crusty icing and made a new batch.  I re-decorated the dolphin (though this rush job did not end up as cute as yesterdays).  The cupcakes, thankfully, we just as good and moist as they should have been :)

The cupcakes in dolphin formation.

The re-decorated dolphin.  See the waves (how crusty and hard) that's how the whole dolphin was!  Eek!  This rush version wasn't as cute as the first one.

I wan't sure I'd have enough cupcakes with just the dolphin (though  I did) and so these are decorated  with teal icing, sprinkled with brown sugar for sand, and fondant sea shells, starfish, coral, and sand dollar toppers.

The Games

They played three games:  (1) pin the tail on the dolphin (again, if you haven't seen the movie, you might not understand)   (2) water balloon fights   (3) dolphin pinata.  

Pin the Tail on the Dolphin

The pin the tail on the dolphin, I again have to give thanks to Stacy.  She drew him out and painted him as well as all of the individual tails.  I think she did a great job!!  The kids had fun.  We blindfolded them, made them spin around five times (since it was Leah's fifth birthday) and then pin.  I think Leah actually came the closest but pretty much tied with Annalee and Matthew.

Water Balloon Fights

I had in mind a couple of games to play with the water balloons but the kids just wanted to throw them at each other.  It was so hot I didn't even care :)  It will kind of hurt your feelings though that you spend hours filling up 110 water balloons and they were confetti in the yard within a matter of minutes!!!

(No pictures of the actual fights.  I was actually using the camcorder during that.)

Dolphin Pinata

I had the pinata filled with Skittles, Twizzlers, DumDums, dolphin stickers, dolphin necklaces, and gum.  As soon as it was open, chaos erupted.  The sweet children turned into little vultures.  Seriously.

My Sweet Baby Leah

Here are a couple pictures of Leah.  The first is her blowing out her candles and the second is her opening her presents.  

I am so grateful and thankful to the Lord for all of the great family and friends that He has blessed us with.  Those who don't mind enduring the Alabama July heat for a couple of hours to bring a smile and a sweet memory to my sweet baby's heart.  We are so very blessed!!

A Few Pix of the Pumpkins

These are just some pictures I wanted to share of my little pumpkins.  We have been so busy lately and I just wanted to share....

The Park

My cousin, Cantina, and her family were supposed to come back by our house for a visit on their way home from the beach.  Well, Cantina ended up sick with a fever, sore throat, etc so they had to cancel their reservation at the Hotel Roughton.  My girls LOVE their cousins so needless to say, they were devastated!  So, I tried to have a fun day to make up for it.  We went to the park and played and fed the ducks, went to the library, back to the park for a picnic, and ended with an ice cream from Dairy Queen.  

Last Day of Dance Class

The girls have so enjoyed taking dance this past year.  They take tap, ballet, baton, and gymnastics.  These are a few pictures of their last day of classes...

Look at Leah's perfect backbend :)

See Leah next to the pink pole?

A group pix with their teachers

Ella is in the corner between the windows

See Ella?  She is close to the pink pole.

Dance Recital

We were not allowed to take pictures in the dance recital and I videoed the rehearsal so I don't have pictures of it, but here are a few pictures of them in the parking lot before we went in.

Such Monkeys

These two are such climbing monkeys.  They will even climb the light pole out front!  This is a picture of them after they climbed as high as they could on their playset in order to talk to our neighbors.  I tried to catch a picture of them without them knowing, but Leah saw me and told Ella.  They will often climb up here if our neighbors are in their backyard and just have conversations with them.  They are so funny.  They are such social little bugs and thankfully, we have very sweet neighbors who adore our girls!  What a blessing!  I just pray they don't fall!!!

Dancing at the Nursing Home

Today Leah's 4 year old class from dance went to the nursing home to perform. They were so cute. There was so many kids that they had to be divided into two groups. Leah was quite nervous on the way...repeatedly asking if she was going to be able to see me, if all her friends were going to be there and dancing with her, if Miss Hannah (her teacher) was going to be there, etc...

Waiting to begin

Group photo...Leah hidden in back on left

Part of the ballet number

Still doing ballet

Waiting to begin the tap number

Tapping away

Oh, this cute pumpkin :)  I had a moment of breaking down and crying though.  I was sitting next to one of the residents who kept saying "Oh, they are so precious...Look at them, they are so sweet...Oh, how darling"  and just listening to her comments reminded me of what my Nanny and Mamaw always used to say about my girls.  It made me miss them so much.  I know they would have enjoyed this performance!