Maggie's Fourth Birthday

Our daughters seemed to have a great time at Claire's simple fifth birthday party at home, because Maggie requested the exact same thing. But after her "simple" party was more stress and expense than we thought and realizing I would be 38 weeks pregnant when Maggie turned four, we looked for birthday party deals in our parish school's auction last spring. We ended up scoring a party package at a local gymnastics place for $40.











We scheduled the party a week before her actual birthday, so I would be slightly less pregnant. Our daughters and ten little friends had a great time jumping on the trampoline, going down the giant inflatable slide, and running around the obstacle course for the first hour of the party.





They moved up to the "party room" for the last forty-five minutes, which is really just the upstairs parents' waiting area. Maggie had requested a Paw Patrol theme, so we did our best to simply incorporate that into the snack table.





The favors were little Paw Patrol puzzles from the dollar store with Maggie's favorite candy, Trader Joe's dark chocolate peanut butter cups.



She planned a menu of cheese sticks, pretzels, and apples with cookie butter for the snack.







Maggie and Claire helped me bake the birthday girl's requested chocolate cupcakes with strawberry cream cheese frosting.

We sang happy birthday, devoured cupcakes, passed out favors and we were done! Much easier and actually cheaper than Claire's party at home. I'm not sure I would have paid full price for this party package, but for $40 it was a no-brainer. 

My parents came to visit the weekend of her party. Despite the girls' expressions in this photo (we were rushing out the door for Mass) we all had a great time. They also got to watch Claire's CYO soccer game and go out on the town to see Aladdin with us. 

The following Saturday was Maggie's real birthday. Adam took Claire and Maggie to see the Seattle Symphony children's performance of the Firebird. They met up with the girls' good friend, Paige, and her dad, Jon, for a fun daddy-daughter outing. The show is aimed at children from five to twelve, but at age four Maggie and Paige had no problems making it through the forty-five minute performance. It was supposed to be their Halloween show, so kids were invited to wear their costumes. That night, we had Maggie's friend, Theresa, and her family over for dinner, since they were out of town for her party. We had Maggie's favorite meal, pizza, with ice cream cake, and forced them to watch her birthday slideshow.

One of our presents to Maggie was that I would take her to a painting place to make her own coin bank, something we'd done with Claire a few years ago. We did that the last Saturday morning of October. It was really fun to have some one-on-one time with my middle girl and my mini-me! 

I took Claire to the same painting place that afternoon for a kindergarten friend's party - she spotted Maggie's fox bank on the drying rack and pointed it out to all of her classmates. I loved that she was proud of her little sister's handiwork. 

Happy Birthday, Maggie!

(The password is TheBurchBook)

We love you!

Claire's Fifth Birthday

Claire turned five on March 13th! On her actual birthday, she got to bring in her "all about me" poster to preschool and explain it to the class during circle time.

She really wanted to bring in those soft sugar cookies with frosting and sprinkles from the grocery store as her treat to share with her classmates. Easy enough!

 

On Friday afternoon, we threw a Little Mermaid themed party at home for eighteen little friends. We invited the other five girls from her preschool class and four friends from church, but when they all have at least one younger sibling, it turns into a very big party rather quickly!



Claire and Maggie helped make the four layer vanilla cake with frosting in Claire's favorite colors. 





We borrowed a few kids' tables from friends and moved most of the living room furniture (arm chairs, toy cubbies, coffee table, sewing desk) into our room. We also cleared out almost all the toys out of the playroom, just to make clean up easier.



Claire is really into making what she calls "paper dolls" lately and requested that as the party craft. We just printed a bunch of Little Mermaid characters out on card stock, cut them out, and gave everyone a pack of crayons to take home as part of their favor.

 

The other part of the favor was a pail and shovel from the dollar store. We figured it kind of went with the mermaid/ocean/beach theme, would hopefully actually be useful in the summer, and the kids could use them to store their candy from the pinata.



Although Claire wanted the decorations to be like "the Little Mermaid ride from Disney World," we just stuck with streamers, tissue paper pompoms, and purple tablecloths.





When the guests began arriving at 4:00 pm, we had them sit down to color their paper dolls. (Some of the younger siblings weren't interested and headed to the playroom instead.)



Around 4:40, we went out into the garage to do the pinata. (It was pouring rain, unfortunately, so it had to be indoors.) Everyone got a chance to whack at it with no luck, so then they each got a chance to pull a string. The one older sibling in attendance eventually figured out which was the magic string and revealed the candy inside. Claire picked her two favorite kinds - M&Ms and gummy bears.





We came back inside for a dinner of Claire's choosing - pizza, bell peppers, baby carrots, strawberries, grapes, and lemonade.



And, of course, birthday cake for dessert! Here's everyone singing to Claire:



Betsy enjoyed it so much that she was licking her plate.



 It was about 5:40 when everyone had finished their cake. We weren't quite sure how long things would take, so we didn't have anything formally planned until the party ended at 6:00. We ended up herding the kids back into the garage to play "freeze dance" with a couple Little Mermaid songs and then coming back inside to open presents. In the future, I would have a different, calmer party game planned - something like "Pin the Fin on Flounder." I'd also come up with a better strategy for opening presents so that it's less chaotic. Ideally, while the kids were busy with that game, I would have had Adam move all the tables out of the way so that there would have been space to sit in a circle in the living room, that way all the kids could easily see Claire unwrapping her gifts.



Claire had a great time, though, and overall I think things went pretty well for inviting 18 children over. I wanted this just be a simple party at home and while I feel like I mostly achieved that, I was surprised by how much it cost! Here was our budget breakdown:

Pizza delivery - $60
Disposable plates, cups, forks, napkins - $60
Pinata and candy - $40
Favors -  $40
Invitations - $20
Ariel figurines - $20
Instagram photos - $8
Card stock - $8
Total - $256

That's actually a smidge more expensive than her fourth birthday party, which we had a little jumping place for preschoolers. Maggie had her party there too, but it was even cheaper because we won the party package in the parish school's auction. In the future, I think we need to keep parties at home smaller, either inviting less families overall or inviting just the child that is the birthday girl's age, once our kids are old enough for that. Both to save money and to keep things like chaotic! And I will definitely be looking for auction deals again - I know they had a few other party packages last year.





On Saturday, Claire and Maggie had horseback riding lessons at our town's farm park. We try to sign them up twice a year - once in the fall and once in the spring. Now that she's five, Claire moved up to the next level and got to learn how to trot! Adam took Claire in the morning and Maggie in the afternoon, while I stayed home to play board games with the other sister.



My parents visited for the weekend. As always, it was so great to have them here for Claire's big day. Because it's so tricky to drive through the mountains in the winter, we hadn't seen them since Christmas!





When putting Claire's little birthday slideshow together, we realized that we didn't have any pictures of just the three of us together, so we forced Claire into posing with us. 



On Sunday, I took Claire and Maggie to see the Cinderella ballet. It was a special one-hour production for preschoolers, put on by the same ballet company that we saw perform the Nutcracker. We met up with my friend Libby and her daughter, Paige. All the girls loved it and really enjoyed getting to meet the characters after the show. Here they are with Cinderella and her fairy godmother:



After the ballet, we picked up some fancy cupcakes to celebrate Betsy's baptism day.

 

A great way to end the weekend! Until October, now we officially have a one year old, a three year old, and a five year old. 

Happy Birthday, Claire!

(The password is "TheBurchBook")

We love you!

Betsy's First Birthday

Our sweet Betsy turned one last week! We threw very simple gatherings for Claire's first and second birthdays. She had her first "themed" party with friends at age three. Maggie definitely had more elaborate first and second birthdays; I think mostly because we were excited to finally have a good group of friends here in Seattle! We've come to realize that simple parties really are the right way to go with babies, so that's exactly what we did for Betsy. 

Her actual birthday was on a Tuesday, but we did absolutely nothing to mark the occasion. She's cut five new teeth recently and was up screaming until 3:00 am the night before, so we weren't feeling particularly festive. Thankfully, she was feeling much better by her birthday dinner on Friday. 

Adam and I decorated the living room the night before. We put her new birthday banner and some nursery decor (shadowbox, monthly photo frame, newborn photo) on the mantel. In the garage, we unearthed some tissue paper pompoms from past parties and an old piece of chalkboard, which we used to display some favorite Instagrams from the past year. Claire was so excited to see all the decorations when she woke up the next morning that she immediately rushed to her art table and made Betsy a birthday card.





While Claire was busy at preschool, Maggie helped choose the flowers and bake the cupcakes. They are our absolute favorite - chocolate with peanut butter cream cheese frosting. We invited all of Betsy's favorite Seattle residents to join us - her godfather, Steven, and his fiance, Megan, our friend and most gracious babysitter, Linnea, and, of course, Libby and Jon. They are the only people who have attended all of our daughters' birthday parties! Their older daughter, Paige, is right between Claire and Maggie, and their younger daughter, Eloise, (our goddaughter!) is just a couple months younger than Betsy.



We served pizza, salad, and clementines (Betsy's all-time favorite food) for dinner. We forced everyone to watch her first year slideshow before opening presents.







She did get to unwrap the presents from her grandparents on her actual birthday (a little people fire truck, a toy piano, and some very cute outfits) but we saved our presents for the party. Mostly because I wasn't quite finished with her quilt on her actual birthday! Besides that quilt, we gave her a Corolle baby doll, just like her big sisters' dolls that she had been coveting for months, and a little quilt for her doll that matches her own.



Cake time! This wasn't her first go around with sweets by any means. (One of her first foods was Tim Bits on our trip to Canada this summer.) But she loved it all the same. She just learned how to make this really adorable surprised face which she did constantly throughout the party.









We had to take a photo with the birthday girl before tucking her into bed. We hardly have any photos of just the three of us!



It's become a little tradition to go on a birthday outing. We took Claire to the ballet for her last birthday and Maggie to the circus. So, on Saturday morning, we all went to the aquarium because we remembered how much the girls loved looking at fish at Betsy's age. Well, they couldn't walk at her age, so while she enjoyed seeing the fish, she also enjoyed trying to escape from us constantly!





How is she so big already?! She's actually quite petite, but what she lacks in size she makes up in personality...and speed.