Sophia's 3rd Birthday Party

Hello! Sophia had her third birthday party on Saturday the 15th. It was a blast and to make it nicer, all I had to do was bake and decorate the cakes and get the goodie bags ready. This year we decided to go all out and hired Raja's Entertainments to come and set up a bouncy castle, a giant bouncy slide, a ball pit, and a popcorn machine. We also had them do 100 primary colored gas balloons. the put these on strings and we had small pillars of balloons all over the patio, near the front door and over our gate on a wire. They also set up, manned the equipment and tore down. Pretty nice! They also did a great job and were very reasonably priced. For example, I couldn't have bought 1 of the entertainments for what they charged us.

Next we have the caterer. We hired Sparky's to come and do the food - beef burgers, veg burgers, chicken hot dogs, baked beans and country potatoes. It was awesome- oh yeah - they set up and tore down too!

Finally we had the body paint lady, she painted "tattoos" on the kids that wanted them. Some had necklaces, arm paintings, earrings, scorpions, you name it, she did it. Sophia had Fishies and Stars this time, but it was so hot out that she sweated all of them off by the time we sang Happy Birthday.

The cake was chocolate with butter cream icing. I then put a pink princess castle on it. I think it turned out pretty well and everyone seemed to enjoy it. In fact, I just took the rest of the icing to a friend of mine so she could use it. I think she ended up eating it on croissants! I also had a confetti angel food cake since it's Sophia's favorite. Lots of the Indian mothers have been asking me for the recipe. This is an issue since I used good ol' Betty Crocker for the cakes. I only made the icing. Oh well, just goes to show - box cakes have come a long way! Most of the cakes you get here from the bakeries don't have much flavor and the icing is pretty waxy. They just aren't the best things in the world. Everyone was so shocked I did them myself and Thom, from Sparky's, said he was going to have me do all of the restaurant cakes from now on. We'll just have to see about that!

Everyone seemed to have a great time. Sophia looked like she had been thrown in the pool because she was so sweaty and she just didn't want to slow down to stop and drink water. We would just go get her - make sure she drank a bunch and then poured some on her head. My goal was to avoid heat stroke and dehydration. She had a blast and didn't want them to take the inflatable castle and slide away. We had to explain these were just borrowed, not bought.

After the guest left, she opened her presents. She got so many lovely gifts and has added to her Barbie collection. There is no doubt, she is like my sister, Barbies and toy cars are her passions! Nicole, I may have to send her to you and Steve, especially for the teen years, do we have a deal?

Our baby is no longer a baby. She's growing up much too quickly, but I have to say, we enjoy it and love watching her grow!