This weekend was a big weekend for little miss Ava. Saturday we celebrated her 3rd birthday with a party at the house and Sunday she attended her first show with Grandma and myself.
Saturday’s Thomas the Train party was a ton of fun for us all. We sent most of the night Friday getting things ready. Michael cooked chili while Tom and I decorated the whole first floor of the house with streamers, balloons, Thomas pictures and I even made two little box trains for the kids to play with. All the while, Grandma kept the girls busy upstairs so that they wouldn’t get in the way or sabotage our progress. It was a total group effort and things turned out great. Ava woke up the next morning completely surprised and was anxious all day to get the party started. She could hardly contain her excitement all morning and ran around the house asking when she could go to her party and when could she open up presents.
Saturday morning we still had quite a bit to finish up in order to be fully ready for all of our guests. Grandma and I baked brownie bites, Tom picked up the cake, Michael cleaned up the girls and helped keep them occupied and we all kept busy up until our first guests, Madi and Kristi arrived just before noon. Most everyone else followed closely behind and by 12:30 we had a house full of family and friends.
It’s fair to say that this was the first year that Ava truly understood what was going on and that all the “fuss” was in her honor. She hammed it up all day long entertaining the guests with her usual antics and was a total hoot while opening presents. She wanted to play or wear each gift immediately after opening it. One gift we even went so far as to hide it after she unwrapped it. Every present was followed by some kind joyful exclamation. Lots of wows, and cutie! She had the whole room laughing a few times. After presents we got the cake out and sang Happy Birthday and shortly thereafter the party started to fizzle out. Besides eating way too much sugar and causing kind of a rough night, the party was a huge success. Things wrapped up around 4:00 and after a bit of clean up by Michael and Grandma we spent the rest of the night relaxing in our PJs. Thank you to everyone that came over to celebrate with us. We are so lucky to have so many wonderful friends and family. I love hosting birthday parties and am excited at the thought of throwing 3 parties every year now.
The next day we had another special event planned. Grandma and I took Ava out to lunch and then to see Disney on Ice. Grandma even bought Ava a special Minni Mouse dress complete with red sparkly shoes for the occasion. She looked completely adorable and you could tell she was very happy in her pretty dress. I have never been to an ice skating show before and was excited myself, but no one was looking forward to it as much as Ava. I purposefully didn’t tell her much about the show before the day of because I knew that she would get overly excited about going and would hound me with questions and continuous nagging to get going. True to form, all morning long she continued to let us know that she was ready to go see Mickey and Minni and continued to ask when were we leaving. The show wasn’t until 1:00 so she was a little wound up about things by the time we left. I was worried that lunch might be a bit of a struggle because of her extreme excitement but she did amazingly well and got lots of extra attention because of her cute outfit and attitude.
The show itself did not disappoint. We arrived early so that there would be plenty of time for bathroom breaks and walking around. I was expecting that there would be lots of swag for purchase but I was a little overwhelmed with everything. Disney certainly knows how to market to kids. I fully expected Ava to want everything in site but to my surprise she just wanted to walk around and take it all in. She didn’t ask for a single thing. It may have helped that I encouraged her to bring her own Mickey and Minni dolls to the show but it’s possible that she too was overwhelmed and didn’t know what to ask for. We were fortunate enough to have great seats, right on the aisle and just behind a section break, which meant that we weren’t sitting right on top of the people in front of us and had a bar for Ava to stand up against. He barely sat down the entire time. All throughout the show she waved to each character while jumping up and down or clapping and made sure to point out all of her favorites. Watching her get so excited actually made me choke up a bit. I was such a precious site. I am definitely planning on making it a yearly tradition and next year look forward to taking both of the girls.
It was a fun filled weekend and the festivities are not over yet. On Tuesday we plan to go out to dinner as a family with both sets of Grandparents that are in town for Thanksgiving. We’re going to head to Boston’s for one more birthday celebration and then start getting things ready for the next holiday; Thanksgiving. It’s sure to be a great week.
