Happy Birthday Ella!

This post is a little late but at least I'm still in the right month:)

I can't believe my baby Ella is 5 years old! It just doesn't seem real. 

 I will never forget the day we found out we were pregnant with Ella. It had been a long and hard year of trying to get pregnant. Medical school was about to start for Bob and we decided to take a trip to one of Bob's favorite places before life got crazy. The Big Bend. This is an extra special place because it is where Bob proposed to me. We were just pulling into town and headed straight to the mountain top where he popped the question years ago. We were passing a little bitty hole in the wall grocery store and I told him to pull in real fast so I could buy a pregnancy test. Every month before for the last year I had a full stock of tests and would pee on them as early as possible each month. It was heartbreaking each time it was negative so we were at a point of not really thinking about it anymore. We had some wine that we were going to drink that night so I wanted to take a test before hand just to make sure. I bought the one and only pregnancy test they had and we headed to the mountain top. It must be a magical stop because to our huge shock the test was positive! It was two lines for sure but very light. We were flipping out but also not really believing it yet. I mean, the grocery store I bought it from had no air conditioning so who knows how long that test had been melting in the heat. We couldn't think of anything else so we knew we had to find another test to double check. It took some searching but we found one and it was positive too! We were on cloud 9 and 9 months later our baby Ella changed our lives forever.

Ella Reese is one special little girl. She has a heart of gold and such a sweet spirit. She is very chill like her mama and if it was her choice, she would stay inside crafting and watching musicals all day long. My dream child. The girl has style too. An eye for fashion that impresses me so much. I can't remember the last time I picked out her outfit. Sometimes our mornings are full of me raising my voice and giving her a countdown to get dressed because she changes so many times but most of the time she knows what she wants to wear and comes out looking pretty cute. She will always have some kind of creative spin on an outfit. She'll take a necklace or headband and wear it as a belt or do a twist with her bangs and clip them back. If I ever buy an outfit that comes with a coordinating top and bottom, she will rarely wear them together. Most days it is obvious to others that my child dresses herself but I'm proud of it and love that she loves it so much. Her newest thing is picking out McKenna's outfits too. I'm trying to keep my control on that one though. She tells me that she doesn't want to be an anesthesiologist anymore, she wants to be a fashion girl that picks out peoples clothes. I would love to be the cool grandma one day wearing an "Ella Reese" top:)

Just like last year, Ella is at the age where she picks her party theme. She was stuck on Barbie for a while and I was ready to run with it and have Bob start brainstorming on how to build a Barbie convertible out of cardboard boxes. Then she switched it to a Sparkle party. She said she just wanted sparkle everywhere. So GLITTER, SPARKLE & SHINE became the theme for Ella's 5th birthday. I soon began to realize that it was time to move the party out of my house. VERY hard step for me to take! I love a house party. I love being able to plan for weeks and slowly transform my house into a theme. I love having everyone at my house and them being able to stay as long as they want. But as Ella's party list grew, our house did not. I booked the party at a local gymnastics gym and racked my brain on how to make a brightly colored zebra striped party room Glitter, Sparkle & Shine. I started with the invites. I thought it would be cute to have a picture of Ella on the back with glitter falling on her. I cut up a cheap metallic table cloth so it would show up better in the pics. It wasn't as easy as I was hoping but made for some fun pics and a huge mess! 

Here is what the invites looked like. I ordered them from Tiny Prints. They have so many great invites for girl parties. All parties really. Love Tiny Prints.

Ella's actual birthday was on a school day and she was so excited. I made rainbow cupcakes for her class and of course a birthday shirt.

I woke her up with a banana bread muffin and had balloons all down the hallway. I tied a little treat to the end of each one and she loved picking them all up.

The last couple of grocery store trips she has asked for this random Dora cereal. I had said no every time so she was thrilled to see it on the table. 

My favorite part of that morning was when we got in the car to head to school. I have never said anything to Ella about a booster seat. She has been in a carseat because she was never close to 40 pounds when she turned 4. I had switched out her carseat with a booster seat and she was shocked when she opened the door. She was so confused and when I told her that was her new seat, she couldn't stop smiling. The whole way to school she kept saying that it felt like she was floating on water and reaching out and touching everything and saying mom look how far I can reach now! 

I picked her up with more balloons and a sonic drink and we headed to the nail salon. 

McKenna for some reason didn't want her toes done so it was just Ella lounging in the bear chair watching a movie. I had just casually mentioned to the nail girl that it was her birthday and about ten minutes later the lights went off and the whole place was singing happy birthday to Ella. It was pretty funny! Ella was very thrown off as they brought her a cupcake to blow out but she loved it.

Once we got home, I started making one of Ella's favorite. Steak and okra. Hide and seek is one of Ella's favorite games to play and she asks Bob and I almost every night to play. I thought it would be fun to hide all her presents and play hide and seek with them. It was a huge hit! She was giddy running around finding them. Earlier that week she told me that she was saving money in her jewelry box so she could buy McKenna a gift. She said that she wanted to get her a purse to open so that she wouldn't be sad as Ella got to open all her presents. How sweet is that?! The money she had been saving was actually Bob's pocket change she would take off his dresser each night but whatever. It's the thought that counts. So I wrapped Ella's presents in one wrapping paper and McKenna's present in another. I gave each girl a sample of the paper that matched their gifts and they went running around collecting them all. It was pretty fun to watch.

It was a perfect day and we ended it with a 3rd round of cupcakes and singing Happy Birthday. 

The birthday party was this last weekend and so much fun! I am going to start on that post now so hopefully that will be up soon!