Fourth birthday!

We had a birthday party for the kids yesterday at our house!  We had about 3 families and two other sets of mom/kid.  We rented a bouncy house!  We had lunch, cake, a pinata, popsicles and lots of fun!

The bouncy house got delivered at 8:00 am - before the kids were even out of bed!  After waking, they wanted to jump in it right away!  We allowed them a few times and then daddy let the air out so they wouldn't tire themselves out before the party started.  We let them watch an hour or two of tv in the morning so they would have energy when friends started arriving.

The party was from 12-3.  It was SUPER hot (almost 90).  The kids jumped a lot for a long while.  Poor Veronica's face was bright red which scared me a little.  I tried to make sure she took breaks and drank a lot of juice and water. 

We fired up the grill around 1:00 and then everyone ate.  As I've been known to do, I had WAY too much food.  A few of the moms hardly ate anything at all...  We could have fed 4 times as many people!  Oh well, lots of leftovers... 

After lunch the kids gathered around to try to break open the pinata!  No blindfolds - all the kids were too young (ranging from 3 1/2 - 8).  They each got two turns and the bigger kids finally broke it open!  It was our first pinata - filled with candy and small toys.  The kids' nanny Chela and her daughter sang the special pinata song.

After the candy explosion, we brought out the cake!  It was half Lightning McQueen, half Hello Kitty.  Jackson and Veronica both blew out their candles.  Then we gave everyone the option of cake or popsicles (since it was so hot!)  Needless to say, we have tons of cake in the fridge.

I believe even before lunch the kids were asking fairly often when they could open their presents!  I kept telling them "after cake."  So after they ate their cake they went missing for a few minutes.  Jackson came running to me holding a pack of Hot Wheels cars asking me to open them!  I knew what had happened - he and Veronica had each grabbed a gift bag, took them into the family room and opened them!  Goofballs.  I made them put the gifts back into the bags and then we sat them back at the table to officially open all their gifts.

They got all kinds of cool stuff that they have been cycling through since then.

Friends started leaving quickly and I didn't have a chance to send them off with their Hello Kitty sunglasses and apple slices I had planned to give them.  I think everyone was hot and anxious to get home.  We were hot too.

Andrea helped me clean up which was wonderful (even though she had to get her son to his art class.)  We chilled out the rest of the evening.

And today I've felt like a total slug all day!  I think I'm recovering from all the preparations, and the party itself.  It's stressful!  Hopefully everyone had a nice time.

Unfortunately, I didn't get too many pictures.  :-(  Too busy running around!

Bouncy house fits in the backayrd!

Running for the pinata goodies!