More about Jillian's Birthday...

Let me tell you, May 16th was a JAM packed day! So much so, that I'm just mustering up the energy to post all these photos and tell the whole story of Jillian's 4th birthday celebration.

It all started the day before when Jillian helped me bake up 48 cupcakes and a small personal sized cake for her.  She's such a great helper!  (Not pictured is me cutting paper pendants for decoration, cutting out foam to create cupcake toppers, and running to the store for balloons/napkins and coordinating birthday girl/birthday sister outfits.... more on that later!)

On her actual birthday, we started out by having cereal as a family (for "special special breakfast"according to Jillian) and headed out the door for Jilli's bowling extravaganza. 

Jillian picked out some napkins that she "liked a whole lot" awhile back, so I ran with the color theme and made everything pink and black:

Here's some more close ups... the table looked so cute! Below that, a shot of some of our friends bowling (there were about 20 kids bowling plus little siblings...) and Jillian and Liv setting up a turn with Ryan:

Jillian was SO sweet helping Liv:

Here's the birthday girl posing with her spread and pointing out her FAVORITE part of the whole day... Ryan and I decided she could paint her toenails on her 4th birthday.  She's been waiting.  Years.  haha.  She was VERY VERY excited when I took out the polish after finishing her "hot curls" for the party.  Oh la la!  She's in the big time now!

Time to blow out the candles!  She took about 5 blows to get them all out- haha!  She was also VERY sweet and shared a bite of her special cake with her sister. Liv was extremely impatient during the whole party about when the cake would be served, so I know she appreciated this!

Here's our family outside after- what a great time we had!

After bowling, Jillian got to pick where she wanted to go for lunch.  Chipolte was her choice and in celebration of her special day, she got her VERY OWN kids meal AND a juice.  My-oh-my.  You have no idea.  -wink-  Usually it's water and some of my food, so this is a BIG deal!  Our friends the Spencers joined in on the fun- it was great to spend the morning with them!

Liv needed a nap, so we headed home, had our lovely sitter come over and hopped back in the car to head to DC for our birthday tradition- Mom, Dad and birthday kid out to explore a monument of their choice.  We started this last year when Jillian was 3 (she picked the Washington Monument) and this year her choice was the Lincoln Memorial.  The only problem?  After driving and finally parking, it started to POUR!!!  So, we grabbed a roll of paper towels out of Ryan's truck, and the plastic sun shade for cover (oops, forgot umbrellas) and made a run for it.  The shade came in handy to protect my camera bag, but did little for us.  By the time we got up the stairs of the monument, we were all soaked through to our underwear!  Haha!  Memories!  Jillian was a little cold and cranky, but a paper towel jacket seemed to help a little...

Once the rain stopped we got a few photos and explored the monument (Jillian will tell you that you can find Lincoln on a penny or a 5 dollar bill and also that he is a statue in a great big chair but when we saw him, he was already dead.)  Oh my.  ;)

A few photos, and an entire paper towel dress to ride home in wrapped up the DC portion of our day...  Did I mention how amazing her toes looked???

After that we intended to go out to dinner, but since we were SOAKED, we headed home for showers and PJ's.  Jillian requested to stop at 5 Guys (burger place) on the way home so that's what we did.

After we all dried off, Jillian spent a considerable amount of time opening presents...  she's one lucky lady!!!

 And finally, a picture which clearly depicts how all of us felt after that marathon birthday?

The last little thing I don't want to forget... those black, white, and pink outfits...  The only place I could find that had this color scheme was Kohls, but they only had it in the infant section.  Which meant the outfits only went up to 18 months.  There was a little tunic style dress with leggings I picked for Liv, but I could not find something for Jillian.  Then, I saw a cute little dress (size 18 months) and thought if I paired it with leggings it would not matter that it was short on her.  So.  I bought pink leggings to go under in size 24 months.  Then, when I got the outfits home, I realized Liv's really would go better with the pink pants, and the black was best for Jillian's.  That means for Jillian's FOURTH birthday she wore an 18 month size dress with 18 month size pants.  And Liv?  She wore an 18 month size top, with 24 month size pants.  I thought that was pretty darn funny!

HAPPY 4th BIRTHDAY SWEET JILLIAN!

WE LOVE YOU SO MUCH!