This is what turning 5 looks like...

Since we only have one little girl and she only turns 5 once, we had to make it an extra special birthday party (especially since it was her first friend party!) And boy was it fun!! She loved helping with all the preparations and as I posted earlier, we made the invitations together. Her request was to have a 'dance party' so we incorporated the Tu-Tu theme and called it a "Tu-Tu Dance Party". The girls were all excited and Sadie was thrilled!!

The preparations were a group effort....I seriously feel like I am going to get carpal tunnel every time I do one of these cakes and since I waited to do the whole thing until the morning of, I had to get some help. And Matt did such a great job that I think he might do them all in the future!

Of course something like this would have to happen...Matt and I were both examining the cake and Blake saw an opportunity he couldn't pass up. Obviously he didn't realize how to hold the icing bag and half of it fell out the other end (and that's a lot of fun to clean off of a wood floor!)

Such an innocent look....even put his hands behind his back as if he had nothing to do with it!

Getting the table ready.....we made the table into a Tu-Tu and of course, everything was pink!!

cupcakes

(I only took pictures of the cookies that I had set aside for the girls who couldn't make it...but we had a cookie personalized for each of the girls and they turned out so cute.)

All ready for our guests!!!

We had 18 little girls in our house for the next two hours and it went quite well!! Matt was a bit nervous about it, but I reminded him that girls are VERY different from boys!! And he was constantly amazed and how true that was! Blake even took a nap during much of the party!

Sadie's favorite game to play--"Button, Button, Who has the button"

It's quite an old game but Sadie played it at a friend's house and loved it, so we played it. And I didn't know how the girls would feel about it, but they loved it so much that they didn't want to move on to the next game until they all had a turn at guessing or dropping the button!!

Blake had to play a round or two!

Dividing up into teams for the dress-up game!!!

The girls were in two teams and lined up...the first girl would walk over to the bin of clothes and pick an item, put it on and then walk back and transfer it to the next girl until the final girl in line had all the items on.

(Of course Blake got in line as well!)

Sadie's friend Hollen didn't want to play, so she was my helper for the game.

(Sadie and her good friend Elli Lundquist wore the same tu-tu! They were so excited about it!)

The final outfits!

Now onto some dancing---I mean, isn't that what everyone came for anyways?!?

*Elli and Sadie*

The Hokey Pokey

(I had to include this because my friend Tracie had to come pick her daughter up a bit early and she showed up wearing the same skirt as I had on!!

All the girls ready for cake!!

Cake and Milk

The birthday girl!!!

Such a precious picture of Sadie and her friends, enjoying some cake around the table, all in their tu-tus

Can they stay this little forever?

Opening gifts

I love Sadie's friend Stella's face in this picture!!

And what would a dance party be without more dancing?? Each girl got a pink wand and danced until their parents came---it got a bit crazy, but Sadie loved it (as did the other girls!)

After the party, the Lundquists stayed at our house for the evening and the girls had fun playing with Sadie's new gifts. It was such a nice day, so they headed outside and played with her new sidewalk paint....

..or maybe I should say they used up all her sidewalk paint!! But that's what it's for!

Signs of a fun time with a good friend

It was a wonderful day filled with lots of giggles, dancing, laughing and sweets! Happy Birthday to our sweet Sades--what a memorable party it was!

(Post update: After the party, we went downtown to have some dinner at Punch Pizza with Lundquists. After dinner we walked around a bit and did some shopping. The girls were still so giddy and hugging one another and laughing, but Sadie's earring got caught in Elli's hair and they just instinctively pulled away from one another. I heard Sadie scream and asked her what happened. She said her earring had ripped out and when I looked, sure enough it was gone....the front and back of it!! We all froze and Jen found the stud part of the earring in Elli's hair but no back. I just wanted to get the earring back in her ear as fast as I could and figured we would worry about finding a back after that (or I could just put one of mine on for the time being). I couldn't get the earring back in, although it was starting to get dark outside, so we all headed back to our cars and I got some neosporin out of my first aid kit in the trunk and put it on the end of the earring, thinking that would help get it back in as well as prevent any infection. Now keep in mind that her ears had been pierced for 3 full days at this point, so I didn't think they would close up after just 10 minutes. But sure enough it had!!! I tried and tried in the car and could not get it through and couldn't see the hole going all the way through her ear lobe (sorry if this is too much information for some of you, but if you have your ears pierced, you know what I am talking about). I tried from the front and back with no luck. So Matt took over. Thankfully he knew what he was doing and told Sadie it would hurt a bit and just went for it....yes, he had to REPIERCE her ear!!! But he was smart about it and didn't mess around--he just did it! And he had to use a lot of force--I don't think I would have been able to do it! She was SO tough and I felt so bad for her!! We stopped at Claire's on the way home and they gave us another back.
A few days later she was telling me how she never wanted to change her earrings and after some talking, I realized that she thought changing them would feel like that experience of repiercing them!!! So I let her put my earrings in my ears to see how painless it is! But I was amazed at the toughness of this girl!! And hopefully we won't have to do that again!!)