Family Farewell Party

This past weekend, we had 2 parties for my brother in law, Todd. He is deploying in a few weeks and we wanted to have a get together to celebrate him & give all our family & friends a chance to see him before he is gone for a year. The first party was for his family and there are a lot of us! So we rented a clubhouse & had burgers and 'dogs and a lot of laughter. Here are some pictures from this party.
The monstrosity of a cake I made! It was 6 layers high...
There was SO much food! And major props to my Dad who grilled out all the burgers & hot dogs early that morning before driving up from Wilmington!

My mama & her pretty flower in her hair! :)
My brother, Jeff and sister in law, Malissa...
Todd's mom playing with Sara Beth.
I happened to have my camera handy when my dad was sitting right by himself & dying laughing at someone else's conversation! I hope it was a good joke!
Todd, his Mema, his dad & the girls...
Todd & his Mema
My cousin Ed & his beautiful family... wife Angie & their daughters Abbi & Hannah...
You should all know who these folks are! :)
Me, my amazing mother in law & my hubster...
My mom, aunt Peto, & my cousin's new hubby, Brian!
Todd, hanging with his friends from Wilmington. The father (Jack?) was in Todd's old unit there.
Todd's family: His dad, step mom, aunt, Mema, brother & his girlfriend.
The kids!
My mom & cousin, Ed.
Grandaddy & Hattie Mae. (This was the giggle I got after I told them to act like they loved each other! )
Grandma Tee & Sara Beth...
Rebecca & Todd's cousin, Alecia...
There was such a great turnout & I know that Todd appreciated everyone's effort to come out & support him.

First Day of Pre-K (The last year!)

This morning was Eli's first day of school! This will be his final year in pre-K before starting Kindergarten next year & we are lucky to have gotten the teacher Jackson had this same year in pre-k. We love her!

I had plenty of time to take pictures this morning before Eli had to be at school but we ran into 2 issues:

1) My lens kept fogging up because of the horrible humidity:

and 2) It started to rain right after my lens de-fogged. Ugh!

We finally went to the porch to get a decent picture, but it wasn't the one I wanted for a scrapbook page I had in mind! But he is adorable nonetheless!
Of course, all the while, I am telling myself that we can try again after school. Nope! It was a monsoon all day! And to top it off, when I got to school this morning, I whipped my camera out to take a picture of him with Mrs. White & then realized I had taken my CF card out. So i had to improvise with the cell phone.
Here he is at pick up with Mrs. White!
I know he will have a great time in her class this year! When we got in the car he said, "Mama! You know what my favorite part of the day was? It was centers!" He is so different from Jackson. I have to pull info out of Jackson, but Eli is an open book! :)

It's Mario Time! Party Details on a Budget!

I wasn't sure about planning a party for Eli's birthday this year. I am just going to throw that out there for honesty sake. I have had a lot on my plate & I just wasn't sure I had it in me to plan another party right now.

...then the voices in my head kept saying..."But he's going to be five this year. FIVE." And to me, 5 is one of those major birthdays. I don't really know why. But 1, 5, 10, 13, 16, & 18 seem like milestones in my mind. So I just couldn't overlook his special day, despite the crazy busy weekend we already had planned for that weekend.

So, I started thinking of a theme. I had been thinking about colors. I had seen a lot in cyberspace regarding beautiful rainbow parties centered around the full spectrum of colors. It seemed simple enough. But then my mind starting saying, "but that seems a little juvenile & maybe girlie?" (...hint to Rebecca: we MUST do that for SB at some point!)

Well, Eli is way into Wii, specifically Mario! So I started searching for ideas for that & "pinning" ideas to Pinterest like crazy! The thing was though, that I really needed it to be simple, but still revolving around a theme that was do-able on a tight budget & tight schedule since I was working 2 other parties in the very same weekend. So, Mario it was, but I had to reign myself in because there were some amazing ideas out there! How did I keep the cost down? I used a lot of images straight from a google image search & planned most of the party around those. (I love Google image searches!) Here is the invitation that i edited in Picnik to add the text to a basic Mario image from Google.

I knew I wanted to make cupcake toppers & you can find some really cute ones on etsy for cheap (like $3-$6 for a printable file) but I was still going to have to print them, cut out scallops of some sort on the cricut & put them together. So i just figured out how to make my own using round sticker labels. I think, i THINK, that these are leftover labels we used for my wedding favors 10 years ago! See why it pays to hang onto things? My mom just gave me a box of printables like these (& including these) from her office several months ago that she was purging! Score!

I found what I considered to be a more "boy looking scallop" for the backs of the toppers & just cut them with the cricut & slapped the label on top! Voila! Cupcake toppers! Cost: FREE! I had all the supplies on hand...including the sticks!

Of course, Eli had a few opinions on what the cast of characters was going to be. I really just wanted Mario & Luigi. But he insisted on Bowser (the mean ugly dude), and if we were going to add that guy, then I decided to add Princess Peach for the girls in attendance and Yoshi because he is just cute! :)

While I was printing up labels for the cupcake toppers, I went ahead & printed up an extra sheet of just Mario & Luigi. And they came in handy as part of the favor bags....

What was in the Mario bags? Well, some cute stuff!

Chocolate Gold Coins! Because there are a LOT of coins in Mario land! Cost: $4 for the gold coins (I had the bags & stickers!) I added 2 coins to each goodie bag along with a few other goodies like homemade coloring books (also straight from Google Image search!) Cost- FREE again!

And thank you to Kellogg's for your Mario Fruit Snacks! :) Cost $1.50!

Now this next project is my favorite of all the details! I did have to order a mold on Amazon for $2, plus shipping (so $5 total) but it was well worth it! :) What do you get when you take an amazingly cute mold & add some melted chocolate & lollipop sticks?

You get some awesome mustache chocolate pops! How cute are these?!

I couldn't resist adding in some mustache details since Mario & Luigi have very large mustaches!

And to top that off: I went into Michael's to look for a red hat to make a Mario hat. I was thinking that I would make one & have the kids all take a picture wearing it along with a stick-on mustache. I got in there & the hat rang up for only .79c!! I immediately went back & got one for all the kids & made them all Mario hats! Whoop! Proof of the cuteness:

So the grand total for detail supplies was.....22.00 not including paper products (which I scored at the Dollar Tree!) & food. So I am pretty proud of myself for the low cost birthday this year! :)

And here are a LOT of other pictures to capture his special day:

We started a few new traditions:

1) the birthday wreath that I already blogged about..

2) I got a free printable from here that I am going to display every birthday too!

3) Waking up to balloons in your room totaling the age you are. In the balloons is a dollar bill. So Eli woke to 5 ballons in his room & earned an instant $5! He was so excited when he saw them. He said, "Uh, mommy? There's balloons in my room!"

I had a bunch more to share from my friend Kim, but stupid blogger won't let me upload them for some reason! Keeps saying "bad request." Maybe because it is on a disk? I don't know! I am quite frustrated so I am giving up for now!! :) I have officially wasted several hours trying!

My boy is 5!

Today is my little guy's fifth birthday. Five is such a milestone to me. It sounds so much older than four! To say it flew by would be a gross understatement! I am sure I say that with each passing birthday for my kids, but it is true! I don't think I ever realized how fast time went by until I had kids of my own. I still think of Eli as my baby but really, he is no baby at all. He loves to be "babied", though, but we are working hard on that! :)

Eli, we love you more than we could ever put into words! The Lord blessed our family so much when he gave us you! Thanks for always providing us with a good laugh & lots of cozy cuddles! xoxo!

We are having a little birthday party for him tonight at the park, so more pictures will be forthcoming. In the meantime... enjoy these pictures I took of him today while waiting for the bus to drop Jackson off. He was playing with his cars in the grass. He still has such an imagination!