Ella's Tea Party Birthday!

Ella's Birthday party was originally scheduled for February 23rd, but then we had sickness run through our house so I decided to postpone it until March 9th. 

When it comes to a birthday party for Ella I always have the hardest time. In the past few years Ella has not had that much fun at her parties. Either she's just not that into it or she doesn't know how to act when there is that many of her friends together or something. It feels like this slippery slope and I don't really have any idea how to manage it. I thought about having just a playdate with her school friends and then a party with her family friends, but that just seemed like too much trouble. Ella really wanted to have a princess tea party and she wanted all her friends both family and friends from school to come. Anything for my precious girl! 

At first I was just going to have the girls sit at the dining room table and then the mom's would stand and socialize in the kitchen, but the closer it got to the party I realized that didn't sound like much fun. I decided that we needed to have the tea party in the garage like we did the last time she had a tea party. I knew I didn't want it to be as elaborate as the first party though....that was exhausting to plan! Also I didn't want us to freeze being out in the garage. That's when I asked our neighbor Lance if he would cut a hole in our furnace so we could heat our garage like they heat theirs. He was all for it so a couple days before the party he came over and took care of that for us. It was so nice to have the garage all warm for the party. 

Ga-Ga & Pa brought over the tables and chairs for us. We had 2 rectangle tables and 6 chairs at each table. I also had the food table set up out in the garage as well. 

The best part of Ella's party was that her teacher Ms. Castle came!!! I was floored when she said she wanted to come. I mean so sweet right!!!! She even went up into Ella's room and socialized with all the girls. 

Auntie Stephie, Ga-Ga & Ms. Kim were there as well. 

There were a few of Ella's family friends that couldn't come due to various reasons, but it really ended up being a great number of girls. There were 5 girls including Ella and then Ms. Castle so they were able to fit at one table together. Ella's on the left in the front, behind her is Riley, Olivia is at the head of the table, Ms. Castle, Helena and then Caitlynn is on the front right. 

To make it easier on myself I used paper/plastic everything except the tea cups. Everyone had their own ceramic tea cup. 

Here's the food table...we had strawberries, grapes, scones with raspberry jam and lemon curd, lemon bars, mini donuts, carrot & celery with ranch, BBQ little smokies and 4 kinds of tea sandwiches. The girls also got raspberry sorbet in cute little containers....you can see them in the picture above with all the girls at the table. To drink they had the option of English Breakfast tea or Raspberry Lemonade...which was dye free...yahoo!!! 

My cute birthday girl! 

Cute girls enjoying their tea! Ga-Ga, Aunt Stephie, Ms. Kim and I sat at the other table. After the girls went up to play Ms. Castle came over and joined us! It was so nice visiting with her! 

Ready to open presents! 

LOL Doll.....yay!!! 

Another fuzzy ball!!!

LOL fashion plates! I was so excited about these...I loved fashion plates growing up! 

Ella asked Ms. Castle for teacher markers...aka Dry Eraser markers. She was so excited!!!

The hit of the party...a 3lb bucket of SLIME courtesy of Olivia!!! 

I found Ella this cool drawing pads at Costco. It was s two pack and it's like those drawing pads we had when we were kids where you take the plastic pencil and write on it and then lift up the page and it erases so you can write on it again. This one is an electronic version....you draw on it and then hit a button and it erases it. So cool! 

Auntie Stephie got Ella her ABC mat for her clubhouse so it will be more comfortable to sit in and the she also got her this amazingly soft pink throw blanket!

Ms. Kim & Caitlynn got Ella a Lisa Frank coloring book and an LOL doll like the one we got Logan. As you can tell she was super stoked!

More LOL dolls and Squishies!

Her card from Ga-Ga & Pa had $9 in it of course!

Then it was out to the deck to open her present from Ga-Ga & Pa. She was having trouble getting the BBQ cover off it so we had to help and we had her close her eyes!

I love her reaction and Helena's as well. She was so excited to have a bigger girl bike. The first thing she said was....it has one of these things and she pointed to the kick stand! Official big girls status when your bike has a kick stand!

Loving her bike!!! 

Pictures with the partygoers! 

Ella & Ms. Castle...seriously she is just the sweetest teacher ever! I so appreciate her taking time out of her day to make Ella's birthday really special. 

These girls are all so sweet! 

Kim and I with our sweet girls!

Let the slime playing commence! 

Aunt Stephie with Ella Bean! 

In regards to parties this was definitely one of Ella's best! The amount of girls there was perfect for Ella...enough to make her feel special, but not too many that she felt overwhelmed. Also the party itself was perfectly simple for her. The only thing we did was eat! After that the girls just went off and played...no special activities, no games...none of that. Just simply played and it was amazing! It was a huge eye opening thing to me since I usually try so hard to have things for the kids to do, but now I think I'm just going to let the kids play and not fuss so much about planning. 

Killer!

The first weekend of March I was at my church's Women's Ministry Retreat. While I was there we were talking about our pets. I was telling them about Charlie and his cat door. One of the ladies asked me if he'd ever brought a dead animal inside through his door. I told them he's never done that because the cat door is on the back side of the house and he always kills rodents and leaves them on the front porch. 

Well...never say never!!!! 

The day after the retreat Charlie brought a bird inside through his cat door! Thankfully it was already dead, but seriously!!! 

He brought it all the way upstairs and laid down next to it all proud of himself. He actually decided to start playing with it on the stairs and I took a video to text to Michael. 

Once the feathers started coming out and that was the end of that. It was kind of fun seeing him playing since that's not something we get to see him do at all. He's never really been that interested in toys from the store.

Celebrating Ella / Logan's Visit!

February was so messed up in regards to so many snow days. We were supposed to have Friday the 15th off because it was a built in snow day. Then we had the small bit of snow at the beginning of the month so that got taken away. Then the at the end of the first week snowmageddon hit and the kids ended up missing almost that entire second week except they had to go to school on the day they were originally supposed to have off. Too funny! 

Michael stayed home that Friday because he was so drained he needed a day off. Since it was the day before Ella's actually birthday we took donuts to school to celebrate with her classmates. 

Each of the kids got two donuts...one powdered sugar and one chocolate. 

The kids were singing so funny it was hilarious and Ella definitely thought so! Cute girl!!! I love how everyone in her class really does look out for her. They are always so concerned about her and that kids are treating her well and also her being safe and not eating any dye. Such sweet kids! 

The morning of Ella's actual birthday we had another party to go to. It was Caitlynn's birthday...well actually her birthday had been planned for the previous Saturday, but with the snow it got canceled. Ella thought it was funny to be going to another person's birthday party on her actual birthday. While we were at the party Ella was acting all strange. She knew that Logan was coming over after the party and it seemed to me she just wanted to get the party over with and go home. I told her that she needed to go play and have fun because we weren't leaving until after the festivities and it would make the time go faster if she just went and played. She didn't want to though so she just sat next to me and chilled. The closer it got to the end of the party I start suspecting that maybe it wasn't that she wanted to go home to play with Logan, but that she wasn't feeling good. 

When we got home Ella decided she wanted to take a nap and Logan had just got there. That showed me that she REALLY wasn't feeling good. I was hoping that she was just tired and had a headache and would wake up feeling right as rain after a couple hours. Logan was so sweet and understanding. She just stayed downstairs and hung out with the boys playing with them and watching movies. 

After about an hour and a half I went and checked on Ella. She had a fever and was still feeling yucky. I didn't want her to sleep too much though so I had her get up and I gave her some medicine. Our master bedroom was still set up with the big TV from when I had surgery so we set Ella and Logan up in there so they could be together and watch girly movies. They spent almost the whole day there together. Poor Ella felt so bad though she didn't want to eat anything. Because of that I didn't make what she requested from her birthday since I wanted her to be able to enjoy it. Later on one of the kids mentioned presents and I said that Ella would probably want to wait until she felt better to open her gifts, but the sound of that perked her right up so we decided to give her all her gifts while she was chilling out in our bed. 

One gift from Mama & Daddy, one gift from the boys and one gift from Logan! 

When I took Owen into JCPenny's for his birthday pictures I found this cute shirt on clearance and thought that Ella would love it. I asked Owen if he thought the other boys would pitch in some money and then that gift could be from all of them. He thought that would be nice so I bought it and then the boys paid me back. 

It was actually a shirt set. It had a tank top that said LOVE and it came with one of those fuzzy ball keychains. 

On top of that it had a matching sparkly star sweater that went over it. She LOVED it!!! Especially the fuzzy ball and the stripes on the sleeves of the sweater. 

Logan got Ella an LOL game. LOL Dolls are THE in thing right now and Ella was so excited about it. 

I had actually bought Ella's gift back when I was buying all the Christmas gifts. I was so excited when I found it online I didn't want there to be a chance that it wouldn't be available. 

It's a Melissa & Doug Teacher kit. 

Ella talks about being a teacher all the time and she loves to play school. She mainly just uses what she has and she'd done great playing, but I thought this would take her playing to a whole new level! 

Since we weren't with Logan on her Birthday I decided to buy her a gift to give to her when she came over. I knew that she loved LOL dolls as well so I got her a couple. None of us had ever seen an LOL doll being opened up. It was quite the process and super cool. It was fun having Logan show us all about it. Out of the two she got she already had one of them, but she didn't mind at all having a double. :) 

It was so fun to have Ella perk up for her presents. 

The next morning the kids got up and were all playing school with Ella's teacher kit. 

The details are incredible with this kit! First off the box is part of the play. The sides are held up by velcro....VERY strong velcro. When you pull them down one side is for the student and one is for the teacher. 

There are all sorts of supplies a teachers bell, pointer, markers, flash cards...

math sheets and shape matching.

Report card! 

PE list

Reusable stickers! 

There's even more that I can't remember or haven't seen since I didn't go through the whole kit. It really is incredible and so well made. If you have a future teacher in your house I would definitely recommend buying this. 

Unfortunately shortly after church Ella started feeling yucky again and ended up in bed. She threw up that night and was just having a rough time. Logan stayed with us until Monday morning and I felt so bad about the fact that her and Ella only really had a couple hours of great play time. The other sad thing was that was the start of sickness going through our house and poor Logan's family ended up getting it. So many times when Ella gets sick it's just her...I think a lot of it has to do with her Hydrocephalus because so many times she gets sick and the rest of us are fine. 

Love Languages!

On Tuesday, February 12th since we were still snowed in, I decided to have a bit of quality time with each of the kids. I had recently had each of them take the kids version of the Love Language Quiz. It's technically for kids that are 9 and up, but I had Zeke take it as well. The results were really interesting and eye opening, but at the same time a little predicable.

Jack's score was...

5 Quality Time

5 Words of Affirmation

4 Acts of Service

4 Physical Touch

2 Receiving Gifts

Jack top score of Quality Time surprised me a little since he is so good at playing by himself. He will quite frequently choose to go upstairs and play all alone. I do understand that quality time doesn't necessary mean quantity of time though. The words of affirmation did not surprise me at all. He thrives on being uplifted with words and it's something that I need to get better at. Another thing that didn't shock me was the low score for Receiving Gifts. Of course Jackson likes gifts, but he always has something to say about it...."I wish it had been red"..."I wish it was the turbo version"....so on and so forth. I'm always having to remind him right before his birthday or Christmas to say nice things about the gifts he gets. He has high expectations I guess. He is much more inclined to buy himself something instead of waiting to get it as a gift. 

Jackson loves to help me in the kitchen and since Quality Time was his top score I thought he would enjoy being with me. 

We made banana bread and he did almost all of it with just a little direction from me. 

It's a little tough to crush the pecans, but he got the job done! 

Zeke's score was...

7 Quality Time

5 Receiving Gifts

3 Acts of Service

3 Words of Affirmation

2 Physical Touch

Zeke's top score of Quality Time surprised me a bit as well since he's so good at playing by himself. Plus he's just at that age where I think it's hard to read him. There is a reason that the test is for ages 9 and up. It was still interesting though and I do absolutely agree that right now Physical Touch is on the bottom of his list. He does want to be hugged and snuggled, but he's also SO ticklish and squirmy!!! 

Since Zeke is 6 and his attention span is less than that other kids I decided to have him help me make Kool Aid. Plus it made for a fun treat to have with lunch and dinner. 

We decided to mix one packet of lime and lemonade together. 

Official taste test approved!!! 

Owen's Score was...

6 Physical Touch

4 Acts of Services

4 Receiving Gifts

3 Quality Time

3 Words of Affirmation 

Owen's top score of Physical Touch was absolutely NOT a shocker at all! That kids loves to snuggle and be hugged! I would say all of his were accurate. In fact when you look at his scores he's quite a well rounded kid! 

Owen got to help me make cookies! 

He did really great, but had a hard time when the mixture got thick so I had to stir it for him. I also had to teach him about equal portions so the cookies would cook evenly. 

Ella's score was...

7 Acts of Service

7 Words of Affirmation

3 Quality Time

2 Receiving Gifts

1 Physical Touch

Ella had 2 top scores and they were a total shock to me! I would have sworn that her's would be Quality Time. It makes sense though as the majority of women are Acts of Service.....I am!!! Also I do know that she thrives on Words of Affirmation and I need to be better that giving her love that way. The most eye opening to me was her low score for Receiving Gifts. I love to buy things for Ella...duh she's my only girl! I always have this expectation that she's going to be so happy and excited and I'm usually letdown. Now I know why! It's just not the way she feels love. The super low score for Physical Touch was not surprising in the least. I've literally had to make her wrap her arms around me to give me a hug goodnight! 

At first I wanted Ella to help me make ice cream, but she didn't seem excited about that at all. She did say she would do it, but I could tell it wasn't going to be something she would enjoy so I told her we'd think of something else. That's when it dawned on me that we hadn't bought the kids their Valentine's Day cards yet. I had bought Ella a box of Organic dye free gummy bears at Costco. They came in small packets and would be perfect to give out with Valentines. Ella loves to make crafts and she loves to use stamps so that's what we did. 

We found all the Valentine related stamps, figured out the design and got to work. I cut all the paper to size. 

She did all the stamping...

and she wrote 'from Ella' on each Valentine. 

Super cute! After that I stapled a packet of gummy bears on the back of the card. It was a super great way for her to feel loved! 

After that Ella went off to play and the boys and I play Catan. 

Zeke begged me to play and then of course he wanted to skip out halfway through. I made him finish though and it was great. We did take a break in the middle for lunch and came back to finish it up. The best part was the winner really was up in the air since Daddy wasn't playing. If he plays 90% of the time he's wins and it's no fun! Jackson did win and everyone had a great time! 

After that I gave the kids the option of having electronic time so we all went our separate ways for about 2 hours to just veg out! 

It was a great stay at home day with my cute kiddos!