The Party!

Joy's birthday started on Wednesday and ended on Saturday this year! She didn't mind one bit having it drag on for four days! :)
On her actual birthday we went swimming at a friend's house in their pool on their roof! The kids had a blast.

Then we went out to dinner....

When we got home, we gave her one present and told her the rest she had to wait until her birthday party on Saturday.

She was THRILLED with it!

She got her first American Girl doll, something she's wanted for a very long time!

She got lots of birthday love from her brother and sister...

The next two days she had fun getting mail from family and Skyping with grandparents while she opened her gifts from them.

THEN....Friday, little more than 24 hours before her party, our household goods showed up! We were so excited to get it all, but we had our work cut out for us to get unpacked, organized and cleaned up before the party....oh, and I still had a cake to make!

This is just a tiny bit of the pile. Once they brought it all in, this pile was 3 and 4 boxes high all the way across the room!....I think we forgot how much stuff we brought with us. :) It was very nice to be able to just unpack and not have to worry about carrying it in from the truck, the moving company did that for us!

We didn't sleep much that night, but we managed to get most of it done and the house ready enough for the party. I finished the cake in time too! This year she requested "A Frog Princess" on her cake that resembles the frog from the movie "Princess and the Frog". After many, many attempts sketching frogs on paper, I finally got it (and ran out of time) and drew this one on the cake. I think it turned out pretty cute.

Joy was happy, so that's all that mattered!

We had her party after dinner so here they all are waiting for the party guests to arrive...

Our house was full of new friends and we all had a fun time!

She was spoiled with more presents and play time with the kids. We had our 4 kids, plus 4 more girls and 5 more boys and all of their parents.... it was packed in our little living room....just how I like it.  :)

After it was all done she put on her new matching jammies with her doll and told me "This was the BEST birthday EVER!!" (Yay! That's what a Mommy likes to hear!)

Our big 6 year old now...

P.S....After having several people keep telling me they didn't know how to post comments on my blog I finally figured out that I had some setting checked that didn't allow it unless you had a blog of your own....I changed it! So now anyone should be able comment. Thanks for reading about our adventures! It's so fun to get to share with all our family and friends this way no matter how far apart we all live. Isn't technology wonderful? :)