Mickey Mouse birthday

Maddie's two favorite cartoons are Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Little Einsteins...she watches them every day when she wakes up & when she's engrossed in imaginative play during the day I can hear her reciting phrases and storylines to her dolls. :-) For her birthday party, we invited family and some close friends to celebrate with cupcakes, a great Mickey & Minnie cake (from Safeway, of all places--after I'd called about 6 other stores that no longer made them!), and way too many presents. This 3-year-old is now up to her eyeballs in cool toy food, a tea set and cute clothes.

Homemade cupcakes & decorations. I saw similar cupcake wrappers online for a ridiculous $1.00 each and thought, "I'll just whip out my scrapbook paper and find a template online!" Voila...custom wrappers and sticks for about $3.00 total.

A couple seconds after this, Maddie decided to lean in and bite the whole cake with her mouth (don't ask me why!)...and in the process lit her hair on fire! Thank goodness Keith was right there and it was out within a second and Maddie never knew what hit her.
It's not truly a party until there's the smell of burning hair in the air! :-)

Lisa's aunt Kristen & cousin Bridger

Alli's daughter Macy (age 6)

Alli & Ava (age 2)

Cheryl & Henry (1 month)

Nana & Papa

Maddie is normally an unusual kid in terms of opening presents--she loves whatever the thing is and wants to devote her full attention to it right then. "Let's unwrap it and play with it right now!" Well, when you're having a party with little kids on a school night, there's a need to rush things along. So I encouraged Maddie to open everything first and then we'd play with everything afterwards...well, then she went into birthday-girl-speed-mode. You know, how normal 3-year-olds do it--rip off the paper as fast as you can, glance at it for 1.2 seconds, chuck it over your shoulder and get on to the next gift! I think I created a monster. By the end of the night the living room looked like a tornado had hit it. Oh well! Fun was had by all!