Gracie is Six!

On Saturday, Gracie turned SIX!  Holy moly!  Where has the time gone?!

(Please notice that it is still dark outside in the picture below…)

Gracie wanted a Moana birthday party, which I assumed would be easy to throw together because Moana seems to be everywhere right now, right? WRONG. There is absolutely NO Moana birthday party stuff in stores right now. There’s a little bit online, but I waited until two days before her party to start getting anything ready, which left me scrambling together a birthday party theme on my own at the last minute. Ugh. Lesson learned. Thankfully, I’ve got a pretty good hubby who pitched in and helped.

I made these tropical centerpieces for the table out of yellow balloons and tropical greens from Michael’s. I got the idea from this pin, but the string idea never worked out for me, so I just hot glued it all together instead. Did you know you could hot glue balloons?! I had no idea! I kept the glue gun on low heat and didn’t pop one!

I also made these little clams from Pinterest, too. Super simple and DELICIOUS! I used mini Vanilla Wafers and a can of strawberry icing. I had no idea you could buy candy eyeballs at Michaels, but there they were! It took about 15 minutes to make this entire plate and much less than that for it to be eaten at the party! It was a big hit!

We also made these chocolate-dipped pretzel rods and rolled them in blue sugar crystals.

It all came together okay at the party. I don’t think it will win any glossy magazine covers, but the kids loved it and that’s what mattered.

We had Gracie’s birthday party at the gym where she goes to gymnastics. I thought that we would just have our party while other classes were going on, but it turns out that we got the entire gym to ourselves – and it is HUGE! It was also a coincidence that Gracie’s two teachers were the two who hosted our party, too. It ended up being a big hit! They had an obstacle course set up first. They had to cross a balance beam, climb across these giant puffy blocks that were all different sizes, flip down an incline, and then hop through a bunch of different hoola hoops.

Next, they got to run down the trampoline ramp doing different types of jumps, rolls, and flips. Their favorite thing on this one was to run as fast as they could while Coach Anthony donkey kicked down the trampoline behind them, trying to catch them. They were laughing so hard they could hardly run!

The last activity they did was their favorite. They formed two lines, one leading up to the pummel horse and one up to an opposite facing balance beam and they just jumped into the foam pit over and over and over and over and over and over again.

After the kids played for about half an hour in the gym, we headed into the party room for snacks and cake. We played Moana music and they sang every song. In our goody bags, we gave out sunglasses, Hawaiian leis, and candy. The kiddos dressed themselves up right away, which made for a pretty good photo op.

All in all, it was a pretty simple birthday party. Nothing fancy, just kids having fun. And, of course, one really, happy birthday girl. And that’s really what matters!