Birthday Girl!

This past Sunday, Julia turned 3 years old! We traveled to Wisconsin Rapids on Friday and had a party at Mandy's parents' house on Saturday. To keep the numbers down, we just had our parents, siblings, and grandparents over to the house. Julia has been talking about her birthday for many months and so she had plenty of time to make plans. And the plans were as follows: it would be a princess party, with pizza for the meal, and cupcakes for dessert. Oh, and the word "pink" was uttered a lot too.

So when the time came, Julia donned her princess dress, complete with crown and princess wand, and handed out princess necklaces to everyone as they arrived. Along with the necklace, everyone also received a princess blessing (To the unaware, a princess blessing consists of Julia shaking her wand and then lightly touching it to your forehead). To facilitate different tastes and to make it more fun, a little pizza bar was set up. Everyone could choose their toppings to put onto English muffin halves which were then baked for a few minutes. Ever the non-picky eater, Julia's consisted of olives, mushrooms, pepperoni, and cheese. The pink cupcakes for dessert were topped with pink frosting and fairy dust (clear sprinkles). But before we all had the cupcakes, Julia opened the preposterously plentiful pile of princess presents.
Julia did a great job on the presents, even with everyone watching her. Her new princess backpack will come in handy when she starts preschool this Fall. I spent some time over the past few months getting a special present ready for Julia. I commissioned an artist to create a digital image based on photos of Julia, her princess dress (including crown and wand), and her stuffed pal Teddy Bunny. I then got the art framed for her to hang in her room. Below is a picture of her after she opened it and then a picture of the original artwork. It was a really good weekend. Even the three hour drive wasn't bad - Finn actually slept a lot of it this time.