Happy Birthday Ella!!

Ella's birthday was the other day. She turned the ripe old age of 4. Such a big girl. We had quite the birthday celebration. My sister Andrea and her kids are in town, so they helped us throw a rocking party. And we partied hard, so just be warned. There are a lot of pictures ahead.

It all started the night before when us adults busted out the decorations and turned the house into an enchanted fairy princess castle. Ella had chosen to had a princess themed party.

Everything was pink and yellow and purple, the very colors for a royal princess party.

We even decorated the royal princess throne.

Every princess needs a royal crown and wand.


Daddy "helped out" with the decorations too.

I put the strip across the top to hide the decorative masking tape and ripped streamer edges.

After a late night of decorating we all headed off for a night of royal beauty sleep. In the morning be piled in the car and headed over to the local water park.

It's a really cool park with slides and kiddie pools and our favorite, the lazy river.

We'd been practicing with Ella on how to answer the question, "How old are you?"

"Four!" She's got it down.

We all got wet and had loads of fun. We got home just in time for me to assemble the princess cake. You knew there had to be a cake. And I know you are dying to see it. So here it is:

This was a multi-day project, and a really fun one. The bottom was chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream, and the top was strawberry cake with vanilla buttercream. This cake had towers:

And flowers:

And drawbridges with birthday wishes:

I'm rather pleased with how it turned out.

But it wasn't time to eat it yet. We had dinner of spaghetti and bread. Ella is a big noodle fan. Probably not the most royal meal ever. I asked her if Cinderella ever eats noodles and she said no. Oh well.

After dinner I took Ella upstairs and gave her a royal makeover. I did her hair and put makeup on her and decked her out in her fanciest princess clothing. Then we announced Princess Ella at the party.

I couldn't resist taking her outside for a princess photoshoot.

She looked so beautiful and all grown up.

Isn't she gorgeous?

Then it was time for the presents. Ella was actually fairly calm while opening her gifts. I think her cousins were far more excited than she was. But she did get a little bit excited.

She got all sorts of girly, pink princess themed presents. She really wanted ponies for her birthday and Aunt Andrea got her a giant princess pony with a princess carriage behind.

It came in a really big box.

It didn't take her long to rip them all open and start losing pieces to everything.

But before the kids could get too engrossed in all the toys, we dragged them over for cake.

Four silver candles for my not so baby girl.

Make a wish!!

She almost got them out before I could snap a picture. She must not have made a long wish.

Then it was time for cake destruction. I let Anton have the honors.

It was kindof sad to see it disappear not 2 hours after I had put it all together.

And it didn't take long at all for it to not look much like a castle any more.

And that brought us to the end of our birthday festivities.

Happy birthday to my favorite little girl in the entire world!!!