My 5 year old Princess

This has been the busiest few months of my life! I feel like I haven't been home for 15 minutes in one day over the last several weeks. I'm the activity day leader/coordinator in my ward and we've had the Spring Recognition, the Mother/Daughter night, & the Father/Daughter night all in the last couple months along with all the regular activities we do every other week. Plus with Malia's preschool graduation and dance rehearsals and picture day and 2 nights of dance recitals, and Malia's birthday last week...it's just been sooooo crazy! I'm finally slowing down a little bit to catch up on my neglected blog. As much as I hate facebook and like blogs so much more...facebook is a little quicker sometimes to update or put in a quick post and I've been slowly making the change from blogs to facebook...unfortunately. I still don't like it very much and don't understand how people can waste so much time on it, but it seems like everyone checks facebook more often than blogs so I am finding myself caught up in checking facebook more often now too. =(

So anyway, here's the updates of our busy lives lately. Most importantly my little princess turned 5 a few days ago! She has been so excited for her birthday and for months has been planning her party. She made me a 4 page long 'book' and stapled it all together with pictures and drawings of things that she wanted for her birthday, what kind of cake she wanted, and things she wanted to do! She is my little artist and LOVES to draw and paint and color every single day! But anyway, she was so excited for her birthday to finally arrive and have all her friends come over to play! We were hoping to have it outside, but this crazy weather made us bring it all inside - with 18 little 5 year olds (not including family when they came for cake and icecream at the end of the party!) It was sooo crazy and loud, but Malia loved it! We had to do our piniata in the garage since it was raining outside (thanks Ry for setting it up!) and tried to do a few of our games with all those kids in our teeny living room! Then they had pizza and did the cake and icecream thing...which by the way, Malia wanted a 'butterfly' cake this year so I found a butterfly cake on bettycrocker.com and tried to make it...it took me 2 1/2 hours just to ice and decorate the dang thing! I have never made a cake like this before so I had no idea what I was doing but I was pretty impressed with myself and how it turned out! Malia loved it too and the kids all ooh'd and aah'd so it made me feel good. I think we still have a full 'wing' in the refrigerator too if anyone wants some birthday cake!


I love Malia's facial expressions as she is opening presents! She was crackin' me up! And here are pics of all the little 5 yr olds that came to Malia's party! It was pretty packed and crazy but Malia loved it! Thanks everyone for coming!!


Malia's birthday cake...it was huge if you can't tell!


Malia also got to go to the Princess Festival Tea Party last week. For anyone who doesn't know, the Princess Festival is the greatest little thing for little girls! No matter what age! We went last year for the first time and we will go every year now! It is so much fun and so cute to watch the little girls with the princesses! For more info go to www.princessfestival.com
Anyway, this year they had an extra little tea party that you could do too so I took Malia to it. It was downtown at the Armstrong Mansion. They all got little name tags that said 'Princess Malia' , etc. and got to sign the King's Scroll! Then then went inside and got to the room with the Princess Ilissa and had a pretend tea party and they all got to choose which kind of 'tea' they wanted...some said 'chocoloate' and some said 'raspberry', etc. Then she taught the girls how to hold out their pinkies like a princess and then how to kurtsey and twirl like a princess, etc! It was so cute!




Then another lady (dressed up like Mary Poppins) came in and she was pretending to be the Princess Ilissa's nanny and she said she had 'terrible news!!' and they all covered their mouths with their hands and gasped...totally dramatic! It was hilarious! Then she explained that there was a terrible flood and this village of like 2000 people had lost all of their clothes and toys and their food, etc. Then the Princess Ilissa asked if anyone had any ideas of how to help and Malia jumped up out of her seat and said (loudly) "I know! We can ask Jesus to help! Because Jesus makes everything"!! I was laughing so hard! It was so cute! Then they asked some of the other girls and they all gave ideas...then Princes Ilissa took them to her bedroom and they all got to choose one of her beautiful princess dressed and some stuffed animals and toys from her room to give away and help all those people from the flood. Then the 'King' came in and added all of his crowns and jewels to the pile of things to give away too and gave each of the girls a golden coin for helping too. Then they said they just weren't sure if it would be enough to help all those people and still needed some ideas of what to do... and of course Malia is full of ideas and she said that she would ask all her friends too and they said it was such a wonderful idea and the Princess Ilissa said that she would have a royal ball and a festival and invite all of the princesses from all the lands to come also and help bring things for the people from the flood....I'm guessing that this was a kick off kind of thing for the whole Princess Festival which starts this week and which is also a fundraiser that they do every year to help this charity.
So anyway, then they took the girls outside and played a few games...like 'Red light, green light' and as they walked to the next activity they had to walk like "step, step, twirl!! step, step, twirl!" and the girls were all giggling and it was so cute! Malia has been doing it every time we go anywhere now! Then they had a 'real' tea party outside and had juice and cupcakes and had little crafts and coloring projects for them to do. Malia got to make her very own princess crown and they also gave her a shirt that said "Princess Festival 2010" on it for turning in their golden coin that the king had given them! The whole thing was so cute and so much fun....we can't wait for this Saturday when we go to the rest of the Princess Festival!