Colorful Carnival for Loo

For Angela's fourth birthday, I decided it was time to finally throw her a friend party. Being the third child has perks and disadvantages. I was feeling guilty because Sarah has had birthday parties since she was 1 year old - but then, I didn't have other kids at the time (when Sarah was 1 and 2) and Angela has always had built in friends (her sisters) to celebrate with.

So that mother's guilt kicked in. And this time around I decided to make things "easy" on myself and just rent a pavillion at a park to host the party. I wouldn't have to clean the house or worry about messes there. But then I started thinking about a theme. I LOVE themes. I always have some sort of theme for parties and once I got going with the theme, I can't control myself. My idea for a simple party at the park exploded into a carnival. It's not my fault - I can't help it. I have a problem. These monsters just create themselves in my head.

It started with the idea to order a colorful parachute when I was ordering preschool supplies for the coming year. I thought it would be perfect party entertainment. Then I found cute colorful paper while shopping at the craft store for invitation supplies. The Colorful Carnival idea started coming to mind and here is what the party ended up like. A little chaotic, but tons of fun . . .

This merry go round was one of the big reasons why we picked this park. Angela LOVES it. I wish I got a video of the kids screaming and squealing on it. I'm pretty sure Kaitlin burned about 4,000 caleries twirling this thing around for the first part of the party.

Angela LOVED the parachute games.

One of the carnival stations was a cupcake decorating station. Each of the kids got 15 tickets to spend at the carnival and each activity was one ticket. They could also buy cotton candy for one ticket. Plus most of the prizes for the games were candy. It was a sugar FEST.

"Knock 'Em Down"

"Target Toss"

Yummy green cupcake . . . mmmmm (o:

Disappearing Candy game - a tootsie roll was hiding in one of the moving cups and had to be found.

Face painting fun! I love how Rylan's turned out. (o:

Sarah got a big kick out of getting glasses and a mustache!

Kaitlin at the cupcake decorating station. She was my lifesaver for the party! She helped me set up, take the girls to the bathroom, twirled the merry go round, helped clean up and probably a million other things I can't remember right now. Also, you can see above my centerpieces that I was very proud of, but never got a good picture of. They were big "Popcorn" bowls filled with popcorn, licorice and a boquet of balloons weighted down at the bottom.

Tina resting at the marble painting station because she was helping me so much. Cutting watermelon, picking up parachutes, fetching this and that, keeping me on track, oh, and incubating an 8 month old fetus at the same time! What a good friend! (o:

I also enlisted Tana to come help me at the party. She was great helping set up, running some of the games and cleaning up. I had so many great friends helping and friends' kids, little sisters, etc. Everyone helped make it such a fun time!

Our fun birthday setting. We had a blast!

Kaitlin told me that while taking Angela to the bathroom, Angela said with a huge smile (as her friends were screaming and laughing in the background), "Everyone is having fun at my party!" This made her so happy and that comment made all that work worth it! Most importantly, I think Angela had a pretty great day.