Happy Birthweek to Ava

Ava turned 6 this last week and we celebrated all week!

The last six years have been so wonderful. I love being a mom and I especially love being this girls mom. She is so kind, tenderhearted, thoughtful, silly, imaginative and creative. She is beautiful inside and out and I love her with my whole heart.

We started our week of celebration by having a little friends party for her. She wanted to go to build a bear so we decided to go with the theme of a Teddy Bear Picnic.

This was the picture for her invitations. We let her invite 4 friends and then she got to give an invitation to Claire too. Claire was so thrilled to think Ava wanted her to come and to get her own invitation. We got our own Build a Bear employee, named Virginia to show us around. I am so glad we did the party because she was wonderful with the girls. They picked their bears, stuffed them and then got to pick an outfit. 

It was so fun to watch the girls pick their outfits. It said a lot about their personalities and their likes. Some picked fancy dresses, some picked fairytale outfits and other picked shorts and a shirt. I actually loved to see how at this age they just picked what they liked and there was no judgements by the other girls. They weren't afraid to be themselves. All the bears were so cute in the end.

After Build a Bear we went to Evergreen Park (The Cinderella Park is what my kids call it) and had a picnic. We had teddy bear shaped PB&J sandwiches, watermelon, chips and cupcakes to celebrate her birthday. We opened gifts and sang happy birthday and had too much fun. It seemed unusually crowded that day so we didn't stay and play for long. It was too stressful making sure we could see all of the kids at the same time and I am hyper paranoid of losing anyone's child...even my own.

 

Ava's friend Ellie was an expert photo bomber! Too fun!

On Ava's actual birthday we spent the whole day swimming with friends and having so much fun. I am a slacker and didn't get any pictures on her actual birthday. When Tyson came home from work we gave her her main present which was a new bike that is more her size now that she can ride without training wheels. We ate dinner at shivers with my in-laws and Uncle Mark. The only pictures I got were of Talmage and it shows just how wiped out we were from a day in the sun. We went back to my in-laws after so Ava could open her present and just enjoyed a nice summer evening for a few.

 I can't believe I only got pictures of Talmage that night.

Ava felt special and she liked celebrating on the "actual" day she turned 6.

We ended the week with a family party at our house. We didn't theme this party but let Ava decide what she wanted to do. She requested a pinata and cheesecake for dessert so that is what we did. We had fun watching the kids attempt to break the pinata but that pinata was made of some sturdy stuff. We even took the blindfold off and let them have at it with full sight, but ultimately Tyson had to do some damage to the pinata so we could keep the party going. The kids walked away with literally a bag full of candy. 

The Cheesecake was yummy because it was from costco. Ava picked out the candles and we adorned the cake with her ripe old age!

What a fun week!  On a funny note, the next day Ava was sad that she had to wait a whole year to have another birthday.  I love how long a year feels to kids.  I wish a year seemed that far away to me too. Now those birthdays seem to come to fast.