The Crandalls: Reese's 2nd Birthday Party

Reese's birthday party was over a month ago now, but I've been putting off posting about it until now. It's 11:45pm and despite the fact that Reese and I spent the entire day at the pool and I'm exhuasted, it's SOOOO hot in the house that there's no way I'm going to be able to fall asleep....guess that means it's the perfect time to work on the blog.
Since Nate didn't get home from Spain until Reese's actual birthday, we decided to have her party the following Saturday. Since her favorite movie is Bolt I decided to go ahead and through her a Bolt themed party. I ended up finding a lot of cool party supplies online and I even found a shirt for Reese to wear to her party. She invited a few friends from playgroup and church and they all had a lot of fun. When the party started we just let the kids run around and play with one another in the backyard for awhile, we got lucky that the weather was nice. After they had gotten some of their wiggles out we fed them lunch while I got ready for our games. The first game was essentially an Easter egg hunt, but we called it "Find Penny" (Penny is a character in the movie) and whoever found the egg with a penny inside would get a prize. This game was perfect for the kids because they all knew the concept of collecting eggs and dove in running around to get them. All the eggs were filled with candy so everyone was a winner. After that we played "Pin the Mark of Power on Bolt" which was a little bit harder because they didn't quite get the concept, but they all enjoyed getting to pick different color lightning bolts so it wasn't an entire bust. After the games we had cupcakes, which by the way I spent an entire day making. It's no secret that I'm not a crafty person, but I really wanted them to look nice without having to go to the store and buy a cake so after I baked them I froze them for awhile so they'd be easier to frost and I even heated the frosting up so it would spread easier, then I refrigerated them until they were hard again so that I could more easily draw the lightning bolts on them. In the end I was so proud of my accomplishment and even better was that they tasted delicious too. Anyways, enough tooting my horn, after the cake Reese opened her presents and then we turned on the bubble machine and let the kids run around and play until their parents took them home.
I had been hesitant to throw Reese a party, but in the end I was really glad I did because she's become so social and she loved getting to have all her friends over and run around and play. I love that she has so many friends that she enjoys playing with and that she's not timid about playing with other kids. When we go to the park now, she just takes off and plays with her friends without looking back and she's such a daredevil about doing things that it's hard for me to just let her go and not hover but I try my best. I'm so excited about the little girl that she's become, she makes me laugh everyday and even though I sometimes want to pull my hair out, it's all worth it when she runs up and gives me one of her big hugs.