sarah's 4th birthday party...the narrative...9.27

i realized after i posted a bunch of pics of sarah's 4th birthday party on facebook that her party wasn't one of those easy, self-explanatory parties like a princess party, another character party, or an activity party like park, art party, etc...of course it wasn't...that would be too simple...

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so, back in the summer, i started asking sarah what kind of birthday party she wanted. i was never expecting ANY answer other than "princess party". the child constantly has on some form of royal bling. boy, was i WRONG...she immediately asked for a "letters" party. great, but what's that?!?

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she explained to me that she wanted all her friends to come to her birthday and learn their letters. this summer was the summer of letter discovery at our house. sarah learned to write her name, all her letters, tell us the first letter of most words (except those pesky ones that sound different than their starting letter), give us a list of rhyming words for whatever we were saying, and tell us the sounds that every letter of the alphabet makes. making for some drawn out conversations as we had to have a "letter lesson" on almost every word or sound. so, since she was enamoured with letters, she thought all her friends should be too! and since most of her friends were recently 4, they thought letters were pretty cool too!

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so, i kinda took a little liberty with her idea to make the actual "theme". i mostly did activities, foods, and favors that started with the letter "S". for activities, we had a big inflatables slide, snowcones, star shaped sugar cookies to decorate with icing and sprinkles, bracelets with letters for kids to spell their name in beads, swings, a sand table, see-saw, and our regular ole swingset slide. for food, we had the above mentioned snowcones and sugar cookies, along with letter shaped sandwiches, tortilla spirals, chips and salsa, sausage balls, and then some other foods too-like a veggie tray because can you honestly host a party without a veggie tray? (can you tell from the menu that i'm pregnant?) we also had a bunch of "S" candies--starbursts, skittles, sour patch kids, smarties, sour skittles, sweetarts, etc. in big buckets--you know, just in case the kids hadn't had enough sugar yet :) for the favor bags, we had ABC flashcards, slinkies, stickers, and all the "S" candies.

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our cake was covered in letters and made by our favorite cake maker, lucy hazel. she made our wedding cake 7 years ago, and has made every one of our kids' birthday cakes since then. they are always so cute and taste really good too! she is in collierville (convenient!) and is really reasonably priced! our only problem is that drew's birthday (in february) and mardi gras usually coincide, so we sometimes have to slide drew's party around so we can get a "lucy cake"!!! she is from new orleans and usually goes down there for a week or so to celebrate with her family.

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oh, and sarah's party REALLY turned into a big event for a couple of reasons. #1: my third child (tim) really wanted to rent the inflatable slide and snowcone machine...i was content with all the other activities. but, the kids LOVED the snowcone machine more than anything. one of sarah's friends called mr. tim "mr. red-hand-man" since he was dyed from making cones! so funny! most of the kids had multiple snowcones and the writing was all over their faces and clothes :)#2: i invited LOTS of people to come to sarah's party. for the past few years, we have had LOTS of rsvp's of NO because of it being SEC football season, pee wee league football and soccer, etc. well, this year EVERY SINGLE child was able to come! it was tons of fun...but a little overwhelming as well! and this was really the first year that sarah helped with the guest list, and between preschool and church, she had A LOT of requests!

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thankfully, baby jacob did not make his appearance prior to the big party weekend! at my ob check up 2 days before the party, i told the doctors that they better give me a good report that NOTHING was happening yet! and then, the week before the party, i had TWO friends tell me that they had gone into labor following their older children's birthday parties! NOT encouraging!

i think this LOOOOOOONG explanation should help with the pics i post over the next few days...i AM trying to get caught up on pictures so we can immediately start posting baby pics when jacob arrives!