Happy 5th Birthday, Sophia!

Sophia turned 5 today... well, in exactly 1 hour she'll turn 5. She was born at 11:27 PM on May 14th (Mother's Day 2006).

We had a great day and a super fun butterfly party. I'm sad to report that I didn't have a SD card in my camera so I don't have ANY pictures. Unbelievable!

There were a total of 15 girls at the party including Sophia and Lilly. The girls decorated their plain white goodies bags with tons of different types of art supplies (markers, stickers, glue and glitter, fake flowers and pom poms). Then they filled the bags with all of their crafts, candy, and goodies we gave out. First we made foam butterfly magnets - easy easy.

Then we used markers and glitter glue to decorate butterfly sun catcher wind chimes. They were so cute! The girls got really creative (and messy). After that we played a version of pin the tail on the donkey, but instead I gave each girl a butterfly and had them "decorate the flower field". I used construction paper to cut out different shapes and sizes of flowers/stems/leaves and pasted them onto a white poster board. It was cute to see the final product.

I could tell they were getting antsy...so we headed outdoors to catch some butterflies. Will spent a good twenty minutes strategically scattering butterflies in the field beside the library and in a matter of 90 seconds all the butterflies had been collected. I made nets for each girl using a plastic sandwich bag and a wooden skewer. I cut out enough mini butterflies for each girl to collect 6. While we were outside we "broke" open the pinata. I found a butterfly pull-string pinata which actually failed to open after all of the strings had been pulled off...so Will broke it open and left a trail of candy across the grass.

Then we headed back indoors to ice, decorate and eat giant home-made butterfly cookies. The girls also traded in their butterflies and nets for 6 fun pieces of candy and a swirly drinking straw. I don't know what I was thinking, but I also had a cupcake for each girl. You would have thought they would have been filled up with cookie, candy and juice boxes, but they all ate their cupcake too! Well, Lilly didn't eat hers and I watched Adrianna throw hers away and we found another one that was bald of icing, but for the most part the girls consumed them. (smile).

Normally I wouldn't have opted to open presents, but we had time to kill before most of the parents returned (about half of the moms didn't stay for the party). The girls swarmed around Sophia like bees on honey to watch her open presents. It was hard for us to keep the cards and the gifts paired together, but we succeeded! Sophia received some wonderful presents. Some of her favorites included: a fairy princess Barbie doll & book, Strawberry Shortcake cafe, a Rapunzel doll & Tag Reader book, a Zhu Zhu pet and a dance stage, and a Fuzzoodles craft kit. She also got a bunch of other princess stuff and a really cute bathing suit. A very lucky girl with super nice friends!