Purple Dinner Party

We had a dinner party with Kevin's side of the family and we had a blast.  It was Fletcher's first time meeting the extended family members and Olive was thrilled to get to see everyone.

My MIL's flowers were gorgeous and Olive was excited to check all of them out.   I had to remind her not to pick Nanny's flowers.  I'm excited to start working on our new landscaping with my MIL's help this summer.  She's got a great eye for things and knows a lot about caring for plants.  That's not my specialty, but I enjoy learning so I can have a pretty yard.

 Olive barely noticed that Fletcher was getting ooed and awwwed over all night.  He's lucky to have 5 great grandparents and he got to meet four of them at the party.  Everyone was talking about how big he is and were excited to see him in person.

 We grilled out and my MIL made a delicious spread.  Olive had the time of her life being chased around the flowers by her uncle Rex.  His name is actually Eric, but she's always called him Rex.  So now he's convinced her he's a t-rex.  He's her favorite.

 We opened gifts and she got so many fun things.  She's been playing with her new toys all week and she makes us pull her rocking horse into her bedroom so they can both go to bed at night.  She loves that thing!

We even had a purple sunset to wrap up our purple day!  It was gorgeous and we feel so grateful to have so many people who adore Olive.  We headed back home after a day of partying.  Both kids feel asleep after being on the road for only a few minutes.  We swung through Starbucks and had two hours of uninterrupted conversation.  That hasn't happened in a long time so it was a great date night of sorts on the road.

Princess Olive Turns 3 Party

Olive's birthday is on the 29th so we headed down to celebrate with our families over the weekend.  We both have big families so we always do a lunch party with one side and a dinner party with the other side.  It seems like less work to do two smaller parties because both of our moms and families help out and we appreciate smaller gatherings so we can visit with everyone.  It was Fletcher's first visit to our hometown to meet extended family.

We had a great time and Princess Olive was in princess heaven!  She was so pleased with the pink and purple decorations, all of the family and friends and was thrilled to have a party in her honor.  Three is the first birthday party that she's really gotten excited about.  I loved planning it and asking for her input on things.  Her purple princess party was a lot of fun to put together. 

I picked up fresh flowers (carnations, roses and tulips) from Walmart and then my mom snipped some gorgeous peonies from her yard.  They made the prettiest bouquets.

 Our menu was comprised of two things - Olive's favorite foods + easy things to prepare because we got in town about 90 minutes before the party started.

I made food labels that included the characters from Sofia and the food name.  This was probably Olive's favorite part of the food.  She kept wanting to name all the characters.

Each place setting looked like this:

napkins, cups and straws all came from walmart.com

 My sister made cupcakes, I made cookies and we served ice cream.

 We continued our tradition of having guests sign Olive's birthday book.  We picked Purplicious by Victoria & Elizabeth Kann.  She loves Pinkalicious so I knew she's love this one and it went with her purple theme.  We have so much fun going back and reading her birthday books.  She wants to compare her hand size and wants me to read all the messages from her guests.

 I found these crowns at Wal-Mart for the little girls to wear and then we gave out favor bags with amulets, bracelets, a wand and Olive's favorite treats.

 It was fun to celebrate Olive with our family.

 Three years have flown by!

I found Olive's Sofia outfit at walmart.com and it was darling!!

She was really happy with it.

Fletcher got to meet the rest of the family and enjoy some snuggles.

 Mimi & Papaw were nice to host her party for us.

Cute cousins and friends wearing purple for the party :)

 Opening gifts was fun.  Olive was excited about each one and it was the first time she realized she should keep opening the gifts without stopping.  She used to open a gift and then want to play with it immediately. 

Baby brother wasn't sure what to think about the gift opening.

 There are 9 grand kids on my side.

Here's our first group picture of the whole crew.

Fletcher was hangry and wasn't feeling it.