Birthday trip to Disneyland

Yaya and I took the kids to Disneyland on Jax's birthday. We picked a great day! There were no crowds, no lines and it wasn't too hot.
Jax loved being told "Happy Birthday" all day by all the cast members. He also enjoyed getting to pick which rides we rode.
It was a very nice day! Jax's favorite rides are the Monorail and the Disneyland Railroad. We rode both if those along with some of his other favorites. I'm really glad I planned the trip.

Happy Birthday Daddy!!!

The kids were very happy to scream Happy Birthday to Daddy!

Pictures from the Rapunzel Birthday Party

Austin William, Leanne, and Austin posing for a picture!

Jax, Ace Fenderbender and Christi posing for a picture...so cute!

Us with Momom and Popop posing for a family picture.

The Rapunzels posing by the Christmas Tree!

A hug shot.

BFFs and their baby girl BFFs.

My family.

Rapunzel Birthday Party, Part 4

All three Rapunzels! Madeline, Maryam and Anna all dressed up like Princess Rapunzel!

The Princes, or brothers of Rapunzels eating their pizza!!!

Baby BFFs eating their pizza.

Mommy's great idea to release "lanterns" into the sky. Mommy decided that real fire lanterns was a BAD idea. (Last summer Chrissy and I released a real fire lantern into the sky one night and ended up catching the desert on fire. Thankfully we put the fire out pretty quick!) So, I saw this idea on Pinterest to release balloons instead of lanterns. So, gold balloons is a nice safe alternative and the children loved it!!

Look at their faces!!!! I love this! They're so excited!!!!

Rapunzel Birthday party, part 3

The Presents!!!! Maryam got lots and lots of Disney Princess toys, Tinkerbel toys, clothes and games!! This was the first time she has ever been excited about opening presents. She tore off the wrapping paper with gusto! So much gusto that you didn't want to be too close because you might get hit!

Maryam also LOVED all of her cards! Especially the cards that had music come out of them. She got a card from Anna, her BFF, that had a sock puppet in it! How great is that?

She squealed with delight when she opened the fairy collection that Auntie Karen and Uncle Tom got her.

This card has a bedroom door hangar in it.

Her Lalaloopsy doll from Mommy and Daddy.

The sock puppet! Ha!

Her first scrapbook kit! I can't wait to sit down and make a few pages with her! This one came from Auntie Brande and Uncle JJ.

She had a GREAT time opening all of her gifts!

Rapunzel Birthday Party Part 2, The decorations

This 22 foot braid took me a cool hour and a half to create. I was at my wit's end by the time I finished. "Tangled" took on a whole new meaning for me by the time I was through. SERIOUSLY. I was running up and down the hallway cutting yarn. Maryam tried to help and Jax, well Jax is Jax. I ended up finally finishing it when Yaya got home. She was able to keep a hold of the end while I tried braiding 22 feet of yarn.

Here is the table of food. I thought it would be cute to serve all the food in skillets! If you've seen the movie, you know that Rapunzel's weapon of choice is a frying pan! So, I took it and ran with it! Fun, right?

In the picture above and below you can see the braid winding through the house. It starts outside (I forgot to take a picture of the door) and then ends up right above this "WANTED" poster of Flynn. I thought it was really cute and totally forgive the yarn for nearly causing me to have a panic attack.

The flags! My goodness! I made all of these flags and strung them up. First I hand drew the sun. I made it WAY too big though. So I shrunk it by 50%, put 4 on a page and copied it on to yellow paper. The cutting part is what took forever. Fortunately Brett has coworkers that can be paid with fudge and they were generous enough to cut the majority of the suns out for me. The pink flags spell out "Happy Birthday Maryam". That was a last minute idea. By last minute, I mean I started it at 3:15 and the party started at 4. Lame, I know. My hair and makeup suffered for the banner. You'll see in my next post what I mean.

I couldn't find favor bags so I got creative and made my own. The only thing left in the store of "Tangled" theme party stuff was stickers. So, I bought a package of stickers and decorated favor bags and cups! I couldn't find cups either, but I made due. As for the Pascal party blowers, I found this idea on the Disney website! They had a template that I didn't bother to download because it was just too easy to waste the ink. They're made from craft foam, glue gun, circle hole puncher, a Sharpie and party blowers.....easy peasy.

Maryam's Rapunzel Birthday Party, Part 1, the birthday cake

Brett wanted to make Maryam's birthday cake look like Rapunzel's tower. At the very least, he wanted it to look as if the cake was inspired by Rapunzel's tower. He started building and decided that he needed "more cakes."

He went front 8 cakes to 11 cakes. And I'm pretty sure he would have gone up to 14 cakes if he didn't have to be at work by 5am!

My cousin Eric was joking about all of the tools involved in making this cake. There were 5 wooden dowels, a cake saw, a wood saw, and a drill. I'm not entirely sure that was it, but I know I saw all of those. ;-)

Brett couldn't figure out what to use to make the steeple and I suggested a party hat, which we didn't have. So, what's the next best thing....? Yes, a funnel! Ha! Hey, it worked!

By 2am, the cake was finished! Poor Daddy only got 2 hours of sleep last night! But he will do anything for his daughter. (And we don't call him Bretty Crocker for nothing!)