Claire's birthday

Claire turned 3 last week and it almost snuck up on us too fast. Instead of a party with just 3 year olds we decided to have a BBQ and invite family and some friends. I think we had 24 people here. It turned out great, so great, in fact, that I only took a few pictures. Looking back, I feel bad because Claire and everyone else was having a really fun time and would love to have pictures for her to remember that.

Claire is really into princesses right now, so I searched the Internet for ideas on a castle cake. This cake is a take on one that I found. I asked my mom if she could just bake the cakes and I would assemble and frost it. She said that she could do more and would do the whole cake. I sent her the link to the picture I found, but it looked nothing like this! This is SO much better than I could have done. Claire loved it! It was a pink masterpiece complete with sparkly pink sugar and jelly beans.

Even though it was a bit cold outside people sat out there. We served hot dogs for the kids, shish-ka-bobs for the adults and fruit and salad for everyone.

We put lots of extra candles on the cake so that all of the kids could help blowing out the candles. After cake Claire literally tore through all of her presents. Lots of fun princess things were received. It was hard to decide what to play with first.

After church on Sunday Claire wanted to wear her new Tinkerbell costume. She promptly fell asleep on the chair with her blanket. She was all tuckered out after all of the birthday fun. We were at a store later in the week and she told me that she wanted to get something because it was her birthday. Apparently when you are three your birthday lasts all year long.