Ella Turns 5!

My sweet Ella Joy turned 5 this summer!  I sort of can't believe it.  5 is a big birthday.  5 means Kindergarten.  5 is the end of "early childhood."  All vestiges of her babyhood have completely vanished.  And since she is my youngest, it means I now have school age kids, not little kids.  Basically, 5 is the end of an era.

But rather than be sad about it, I've decided to celebrate the fact that she is independent.  She doesn't need me for every little thing anymore, and that is incredibly freeing.

Anyway.  This post is supposed to be about her, not me.

This year Ella requested not to be traveling for her birthday.  She wanted to be home, and to have a friend party.  Since we've never thrown a friend party for her before, I reluctantly acquiesced. I was pretty nervous about the whole thing, especially when it feels like the norm for birthday parties around here is to go to a place and pay oodles of money for someone else to entertain the kids.  I'm pretty frugal (sounds way better than cheap), so I'd rather make it more difficult for myself and save a few bucks.  In the end, I actually think everything turned out really well, and we had one happy birthday girl, so it was all worth it.

Ella decided on a fairy party.  So I started by making little "fairy" invitations.  I thought they were kind of adorable.

And then, because I am technology impaired, you'll have to imagine a little slip of paper with all the party details, including my address and phone number, which I'm not keen to publish on the internet. 

We invited 5 girls, since it was her fifth birthday, and I felt that was exactly the right number.  We had enough guests to keep things interesting, but not so many that I was going insane.  Thankfully Clark had the day off work, and was there to help things run smoothly.  We supplied fairy wings, decorated fairy houses, made fairy wishes with fairy dust, ate fairy snacks (including cupcakes!), and opened presents.  I had a few other activities at the ready, but the girls just wanted to play.  I say if they are happy to just play on their own, who am I to rock the boat? 

We were all pleased with how the party turned out.  Even Julia, who has been a jealous mess for every other birthday Ella has ever had, was delightfully happy the entire time.  I think it was just what Ella had been hoping for, and I'm glad we could do it for her!