pseudo-seven

I used to give the girls a birthday party every year........and then I stopped. We decided to go to the every other year policy when it came to friend birthday parties. However I didn't think enough about it to spread them out, or do alternating years so that all three parties don't end up in the same year! So this was the year for every ones friend parties and Josey's was the last of the year. YEAH!

I told her that we would do a party before school got out seeing how her birthday is in July and it is hard to find people around. Last week I realized.......that school was almost out! So we quickly decided on Saturday as the day and started planning for the party. She decided to do another LUAU which I was glad for because we already had TONS of stuff from her last party and it worked with boys and girls.

It was a great hot day to play at the park and I think she had lots of fun. Here she is with all her little friends. There were a couple more girls invited but they couldn't come. It cracked me up that there were 5 boys and 1 girl at her party.....but when it comes to Josey that really isn't much of a surprise.Here are some of the decorations that she wanted to put up.This little boy sitting next to Josey is Gavin. He moved a few months ago and no longer goes to school with Josey. Josey was devastated. He was her very best friend and they played every day together. When he moved I told her to get his address and phone number and we could try and keep in touch. She wanted to invite him to her party and luckily he hadn't moved very far and was able to come. She was SO HAPPY to see Gavin and have him at her party.
Her cute cake. Didn't I do SUCH a good job? I really worked hard on this cake to make it look perfect.......it took me about 2 stores to find the right one.

It was so windy under the covered area that we actually had to pretend to blow out candles.


Then we got ready for these!


I literally spent about 2 hours blowing up water balloons......it was torture! The skin on my pointer finger was about ripping off. But I got 250 balloons blown up and I am REALLY glad that I did. It was really hot and the kids had a ball playing all sorts of games with them. Dustin was such a good help. He always is at kid parties. We should seriously rent out his services. He can keep kids entertained for hours and has so much energy and they always LOVE him.

I really don't know why Dustin is making this face? Is the pinata too heavy for you?

Then we opened presents and my camera started only taking blurry pictures.

Here is her loot. It cracked me up and I wanted to take a picture of her presents because they are so random and diverse and perfect for Josey. She got everything from make-up to science activities to star wars. She was in HEAVEN!

We decided at the end to have a portrait contest while we were waiting for the parents. We opened up the chalk and everyone had to draw a portrait of the birthday girl and she would pick the best one to get a picture taken with. This was the winner drawn by her friend Madison.

I have to say I am SO glad that all the parties are done for the year! Partly because they are a lot of work and partly for the expense. Putting on 3 parties in basically a month gets EXPENSIVE! We will do something special for her real birthday in July and that will be fun. Happy "pseudo" seventh birthday Josey!