Rush Hour: Madison's 3rd Birthday Party

First, sorry if you came to the blog and it was in disarray. I was changing the look of it. Do you like the one column? Sheryl, I copied you, and a few other people I might add. I love the clean, organized look of it all. I took off a lot that I had in my side column. But you can find most of it down at the bottom of the page.

Now I just need to make a new header!

But let's get to Madi's birthday party.

We finally had it yesterday. We have so many birthdays to celebrate that this was the first weekend that I was able to do it. It wasn't a huge party, just family. But I think it's nice to decorate, have cake, and dinner for all types of birthday parties. Madi definitely felt special, and loved her cake!

Let's get to the pictures shall we?

Madi decided that she wanted a Cinderella birthday party (I tried to push Little Mermaid...under the sea...but she wasn't having it) so we headed to Party City to get a few things for decorations.

And I went to work on Saturday decorating.

I made Madi a cake. Everything else is from what I made for my Mom's bunco the night before that was leftover.

Desserts:

vanilla cake with chocolate chips and strawberry mousse

petit fours

pumpkin chocolate chip cookies

double dark chocolate cupcakes with either peanut butter whip or coconut whip

mascarpone cheesecake (for some special guests :)

We started our party off with some

Appetizers:

little weenies wrapped in crescent rolls
Tomato and Basil bruschetta
Mozzarella sticks

And mingling...do these not look like some serious conversations?

Really quick story that I want to remember. On Friday, we got to my Mom's house to help with her bunco and Madi saw BaBa in the driveway. She said, "Oh look, there's my friend Baba!" How sweet is that?

And this...

We quickly found ourselves watching Madi open up her gifts while we waited for dinner to get done. I really had no choice but to have Madi open up her presents first. I mean, it was either we did it officially, or she randomly grabbed presents out of bags while nobody was looking.

And who says you have to do presents after dinner?

:)

PS. Special shout out to my Mom who took all the pictures that follow this. They turned out AMAZING! Thank you Mommy, they are so perfect! You captured every moment beautifully!

It was really hard with Riley not having her birthday when Madi had hers. Wowzers. Hoping that is the last year for that. Or at least that she will understand more and be patient for her own birthday. But thank you for the gifts for Riley, family. That helped a lot!

After presents, dinner was heated up and we sat down to eat.

Dinner: (easy peasy)

ziti
salad
garlic bread

Which we then followed immediately (kind of, I washed the dishes first, quickly) with cake!

We sang to the birthday girl...

And she blew out her candles, in one try!

And then she was nice enough to let her sister take a shot at it...

Confession: The candle is on the back of the cake and she only got one. I was annoyed at this point because Riley still didn't get it through her head that it was her sister's birthday, and I was so sick of the whining. In retrospect, I should have just gone with the flow. Madi didn't seem to mind so why did I? Ugh, you live and you learn. At least I didn't say no to the candle all together right?

Poor Riley, it was so hard on her. I had gone through 2 days of it already though. I hit my breaking point. Okay...confession over. I feel better, sorry my sweet Riley! I love you!

Time to dig in!