Happy Birthday, Bailey!

Yesterday was Bailey's birthday and party. I felt like a bad mom in the morning, because after being so excited to go to school with her birthday poster and show it to the class and everything, I got there, and it went well until she asked me where the treats were......Treats?........Needless to say, I'd forgotten. And I couldn't go get some right away, because I had to get back to work. Jonathan said not to worry about it, save the money, but I refused to be The Mom Who Didn't Bring Treats. That's a title I won't accept. So I made it up for it by running to Wal-Mart after work and buying 3 pink roses, a bag of cookies for her afternoon class, and another for her morning class to have today. I took them to her afternoon classroom while she was still at lunch, so when she got to class, she had roses and cookies! And they liked my poster! :-)

My sister Camille brought her 2 kids up for the birthday party and to help me get ready (thanks, Sis!), because we had to make cupcakes and a cake. (Bailey wanted each of the girls to decorate her own cupcake at the party, but we also thought we needed a real cake with candles to sing over.) Unfortunately, with everything else we had going on, the cake kind of took a backseat in importance, and we put it off to the last minute. It was not very cute, but Bailey was happy, and that's what's most important!

Bailey insisted on a pool party, and since I'm not insane (most of the time) I told her that meant she could only have the girls from her primary class, to limit numbers. So her guests were Kaylie, Baylee, Isabella, and Savannah, plus Colby and her cousins (who were too shy for the camera). We went to the SUU pool and just played and swam, although I think the poor lifeguards were nervous the whole time!

My Aunt Barb and cousin Aaron showed up at the pool to watch and bring Bailey a gift, and ended up staying to the end of the party to help. It turned out to be very nice to have a dry adult around to help out and watch the kids from above, and Aaron took all the pictures--thanks!!!

As their party gift, I gave each kid a set of swimming goggles, which turned out to be really annoying, because I was constantly putting someone's back on, but Colby loved them, even if he did look really goofy wearing them!

At one point Camille directed me to the edge of the pool, where Colby had already assumed the position and was just trying to get his trunks down past the life vest strap (which, thankfully, was holding them up). I yelled at Barb, who ran to stop him but was laughing so hard that first she had Aaron take a picture as she herded Colby to the bathroom.

Bailey takes after her daddy and is totally unafraid of the water, so she was quite resentful when the lifeguard demanded that she wear a life jacket. But then she discovered the beauty of lying on her back in the water, and she swam like that the rest of the time--unfortunately, that meant she kind of ignored her friends!

In the 5 minutes it took to drop off Baylee and drive home, Colby crashed in the back seat, still wearing his goggles. A little too much partying for this 3-year old! I thought of a million possible captions for this photo, but I also thought it would be funny to get some of yours, like in magazines when they ask the reader to finish the punchline. Any ideas?

Since we ended up running short of time at the party, because the kids didn't want to get out of the pool, we had to rush everything else. We had about a half hour to change clothes, eat pizza, and decorate cupcakes, so we had to bring the presents home to open them after the party. I promised the girls I'd take a picture of Bailey opening each present and give them, so they could see! Then, since it was too windy outside during the party to have candles, we finally lit candles in her cake and sang to her at home with just the family, Camille and kids, and Uncle Cliff.

just a note: I know that most of you will never read this whole thing, and I'm sorry for making it so long, but first of all, I'm long-winded anyway and it really annoys me, too; and second, I'm planning on using Blurb.com to change this into a photo journal at the end of the year, so a lot of it is just for our own family's memories!