Better Late then Never..... Right?

So I went and looked at the pictures in my camera..... It is amazing how I seem to go through stages with my camera where I either don't upload anything onto the computer for a month.... or I upload every picture the day I take it.... I also notice that the blog seems to have similar trends too.... either lots of posts or not so many.....

Well, it dawned on me that I never posted to many (or maybe any) pictures from Savannah's birthday....(which consisted of the friends on the block) since the computers died...(lame excuse?). So I am going to start with Savannah's Birthday pics and maybe by Christmas we will be all caught up....

We had Savannah's birthday party up at the pool house, even though it was too cold to actually go in the pool. Instead, we brought up all the bikes, trikes, baby strollers, scooters, balls etc that we could find in the garage and let the kids just play together in the pool area and at the community playground. I didn't plan any formal activities, just let the kids play together.... maybe I should have. Oh well, maybe next year. (All of the other moms with kids birthdays here lately that we have gone to have all done several activities kind of making me look like a slacker, but I felt the kids were just too young still to really do a lot.... I didn't feel like attempting a craft, and maybe the kids were old enough but I just didn't feel like they would have done well with party games.)

We also didn't do a full buffet of food either.... late afternoon, light snacks and cake. Savannah asked for her cake to be in the shape of a butterfly..... as I was making it. She also wanted fruit on top, so I made the butterfly out of banana and kiwi slices.... oh and colored sugar.

She really liked hearing her name in the Happy Birthday song....


But was distracted after that.... and never ate a bite of cake. (she did get a piece at dinner though)


After cake we opened presents. Kids always like that part of birthday parties. Who wouldn't???


One of my goals with the birthday party was to make sure that Savannah had fun with her friends. I am sure she did. The other goal I had was to stress the importance of saying thank you to her friends for coming to her party. So we did thank you gifts for her friends instead of the traditional party bags. We bought sidewalk chalk for almost everyone.... (Aja in this picture is getting a book since she is too little for chalk) and I had Savannah help me wrap them up and pick out "tags" that I bought at the dollar store. She then passed them out to her friends after gifts and specifically thanked them for coming to her party. The chalk was a great hit, and everyone loved it..... but best of all, Savannah was able to share a thank you and a sincere, we are glad you were here.

Then we were able to use the same "tags" (they are really paper cutouts) to make the thank you notes. Boy was she excited to say thank you.... in fact she still repeats the thank you's to her dolls and so forth in pretend play.

Just tonight in the car she was saying...."....thank you for my cool monkey pants....."

and yes I know.... the thank you cards that took us a month to finish, are still sitting here to be mailed / distributed. Trust me, they are coming though. Soon, very soon.