Emily's 3rd Birthday

Emily is 3!! Look how big and cute she is getting:

Emily is growing fast. She is 27 pounds and 37 inches tall. She is the funnest little kid and my little buddy. She is also my little helper. She is always trying to help out with Colby, cleaning, and recently she has been wanting to help me sew. Emily is learning all the time. She has the best memory and can remember everything we say or do. She will tell stories about things we have done months ago and sometimes I have even forgotten about these things until she reminds me. She loves playing Memory and can find all of the matches without help. She also loves coloring and putting puzzles together. She loves drawing O's. Emily loves singing and dancing. She sings every song she knows and often she will make up her own songs and sing them at the top of her lungs and then ask me to sing them with her. When I tell her don't know her made up songs she just looks at me like I am crazy. Lately she has introduced us to her imaginary friends Cindy and Shalana (I guess that is how you spell their names but who's to know!) Shalana is a mermaid and Cindy is just a girl. Emily is also a mermaid and tells me to call her Mermaid not Emily. She tells me she has to move her tail whenever she goes potty. I just laugh at her and say okay.

Every little kid Emily sees is a "friend." She also just calls them "Friend" instead of their names. Emily loves going to the library Toddler Time and singing songs with her friends. She also loves picking out books and reading them. We have scripture picture books and we have started reading these scriptures at night before bed. Emily enjoys listening to the scriptures and will not go to sleep until we have read our scriptures. Her favorite movie is "Tangled." Her favorite song is "I Love to See the Temple." Her favorite food is Spaghetti-O's and Otter Pops. She also loves playing with her baby brother. Emily and Colby share a bedroom and Emily thinks it is like having a sleepover every night. Emily can count to ten and can almost count to twenty as well. She can sing her ABC's and we are working on the recognition of the letters. Emily also knows all of her colors and basic shapes. She is also a little chatterbox. She loves talking... all the time. I am constantly entertained by all of the things she says and amazed at all she knows. I love this girl so much!

When I asked her what she wanted for her birthday party, she excitedly said "A Candyland Party!" So that is what we did.

My favorite part of the party was the cake. Loading it with candy, I decorated it as the Candyland game board. I think it turned out really cute. Emily loved it and so did everyone that had a piece. We did have a ton of candy left over though so we put it all in bags and gave them out as party gifts to the guests. Unfortunately half of the guests left their candy bags at our house when they left so we still ended up with a ton of candy! I think I have gained 5 pounds since the party because of my cursed sweet tooth!

For one of the games at the party, we made the Candyland Castle. We used this castle for a bean bag toss game. The kids had fun throwing the bean bags through the holes while we waited for all of the guests to arrive. But mostly they had a blast running around in the grass in the backyard and playing on the swing set.

Another game I planned for the party was the Cupcake Commons Cake Walk. I drew pictures of the Candyland game pieces and characters on pieces of paper to be used for the walk. The kids had fun running around the circle of papers while the music played. They especially loved the bag of candy they got when their picture was chosen.

After a hot dog dinner (Emily's favorite), it was present time:

Emily got some really great gifts from everyone that came. She was so excited to open all of her presents. Her friends were really excited to give her all of her presents too. One little boy, Colton, thought Emily wasn't opening her presents fast enough so he started opening them for her! His mom got kind of mad about that.

It was fun having all of Emily's friends over. We were originally just going to have a family party with cousins but then Emily kept asking us if her friends were coming to her party. She would ask "Is Jace coming to my party? Is Teryn and Trayton? Is Brittlyn and Colton coming to my party?" So the last minute on Tuesday, we took and invitation around to all of her friends. It was good we did because her cousins were not able to come. One of my really good friends came too. My best childhood friend, Trista, came down from Logan with her two girls to visit her family so I invited her to Emily's party as well. Her daughter, Jaydee, is a month older than Emily so they had fun playing together.

Emily was a little spoiled though and had too many presents. The kids started getting bored and ran off and played. So I decided we could open more presents later and it was time for cake.

Here she is blowing out the candles and cutting her own cake. We had cake and Rainbow ice cream that Emily picked out. It was so good. One thing we told all of the guests' parents was that we were not responsible for hyperactive kids due to sugar rushes! The Candyland party was really fun but probably not the best idea for a night party because Emily was so wired that she wouldn't go to sleep.

Colby was starting to feel a little left out because we were focused on Emily. Thanks Mom for playing with him. Happy Birthday, Emily! We love you!