The Sprinkler Ball!

R got the most awesome sprinkler from Great Aunt L and Great-Grammie S for her birthday this year!! Check it out!!!RUS was a little unsure about the ball so no great pics of him with it, but he was out there, too!

R's 4th Birthday Party!

R had a lovely 4th birthday party. She got a new fancy party dress from Grandma and Grandpa and J and I got the yard and porch all decked out for the party, with the alligator blow-up pool and slides, sprinkler pool, sprinkler, and tiny pink baby pool.
R very specifically requested Princess cupcakes and Spiderman cupcakes, because we had invited all of her day care classmates and, well, some of them are boys. And "boys don't like princesses. Boys like Spiderman." So this is what I came up with:
When her friends started arriving, she was so excited!!!!
Here's RUS fresh from his nap. I'm not sure he's quite awake yet in this picture.
It's so great to have my parents come in town for R's birthday parties. She absolutely eats up all the attention, of course, and I love having my mom at events that I host.
This is the table of grandparents! The woman in the pink shirt is one of my closest friends here in Delaware, and she's R's "honorary" grandma. She has a granddaughter of her own, whose name also starts with "R." It's such a good letter, isn't it?
Grandmas!!!
This year, as last year, one of the big hits was the craft table. J found these really easy craft kits--airplanes, monsters, and crowns & wands--on clearance at Target so we snapped up a whole bunch of them and just dumped them all out on the table for the kids. They LOVED it. Here's R decorating her crown while taking a break from the water fun.
We served pizza and then I brought the cupcakes out for everyone to eat. The princess ones were a huge hit.
Here's R with her cupcake after blowing out the candles.
And then her friends crowded around to watch her open presents. I know a lot of people don't like opening presents at kids' parties but I really think her friends enjoyed it. I wouldn't have minded if we waited until after the party to open them but R was antsy to open them and all the other kids (who weren't still playing in the water & sand) seemed really interested in it.

Water (and Sand, later) Table

R got a belated birthday gift from Uncle A, Aunt M, and cousins G and Trucker the other week. I discovered it when I opened my front door to find a giant box blocking my way onto the porch. It turned out to be one of these sand and water tables.

What an awesome gift!

R literally squealed with delight when she saw me pulling it out of the box and putting it together for the first time.

(Aside: It is so much fun to see how excited she gets about things! When Grandma and Grandpa were visiting, we went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner and ordered her a quesadilla, which arrived on a plate heaping with french fries. You should have seen her eyes get as big as silver dollars when she saw all that food being put in front of her. She kept saying, "WOW! Wow! WOW!" while we all lived vicariously through her enthusiasm for the food.)

Anyway, we haven't bought sand for it yet because--and this is another bit of exciting news that I haven't publicized yet for fear of jinxing something--we are likely to be moving at the end of this month into a new, perfect-for-us, house. But we've set it up with just water, and oh my goodness, she has a ball.

It works out wonderfully with the water toys she got from Great-Aunt L and Great-Grammy (note the green fish on the left in the picture below) as well as Grandma and Grandpa (note the blue and yellow clams).