We celebrated under the sea

Ava couldn't wait for her first friend party. The night before the big day we were getting her ready for bed and she looks at me and says, "I need a lot of rest for my party." And then promptly gets in bed and falls asleep. Wow. Is that what it takes to get kids to fall asleep at their bedtime?! By the way, doesn't she look darling in her party dress?

Here are the invites that we sent out for the party. Boy, I am so glad that I married a graphic designer. Don't these invites look awesome! My hubby sure knows his stuff :)

After we had already sent out the invites I happened upon this tablecloth in the clearance section at Target. Two promptly made it into my cart. This tablecloth had to been made just for Ava's party.

Especially since I was already planning on making this for the cupcakes. I think the cupcakes turned out pretty sweet. It is kinda weird to put a goldfish cracker on a cupcake, but none of the kids were complaining.

Josh estimated that we blew up around 300 balloons. I don't have the heart to tell him it was probably closer to 450. Thankfully we had two balloon air pumps. And thankfully we blew up the bulk of them on comedy night Thursday!

I couldn't resist hanging sea creatures all over the apartment. Especially since they all cost a total of $4.99. I don't know how many times I heard "It's Nemo! Dory!" This generation of kids are going to grow up not knowing the real names of the fish!

To help set the mood, we set up a bubble machine near the front door. Word of advice, bubbles will make tiled floor slippery. Josh quickly moved some of our floor mats from the kitchen into the entrance. Problem solved.

When the kids arrived we had them color different sea creatures. I found the cutest coloring book, scanned the pages, and enlarged the animals. I had made a pretty pathetic ocean out of streamers on our kitchen wall. Once the kids were done they got to tape their sea creatures on the wall in the "ocean". It was so cute seeing how excited they were to get to tape their pictures up.

After all the kids arrived it was time for the fun to begin. We played pin the crown on Ariel. Yep, that's Ariel in case you couldn't tell. One creative thing we did was instead of tying a blindfold on the kids, we taped paper onto the outside of one of Ava's sunglasses. It was a lot easier to put on each kid and they weren't afraid to put them on.

After playing Fish Fish Shark (the under the sea version of Duck Duck Goose) we headed over to our next game. Which just so happens to be where the bulk of our balloon blowing effort was (we were too cheap to buy the actual plastic balls!) Each kid got a turn to search for a treasure bag. The kids were so well behaved. They all waited their turns and didn't push anyone. Ava's got a good bunch of good little friends.

After blowing bubbles outside we came inside for cake! Which I made the same chocolate cake that I made for Reid's birthday. And it still was just as awesome as before. But seriously, I could of just saved some time and gave Ava a plate of blue frosting!

Here's all her little friends eating their cupcakes.

The final activity was of course opening presents. You're all probably wondering how a bunch of 3 year olds reacted to Ava getting to open all of the presents. Well, there were no tantrums, if you can believe it. Each kid went and got their present and then they patiently waited their turn to give it to Ava. It was pretty cute seeing how excited they were to have Ava see what they picked out.

Thanks everyone who took time out of their day to make our little girl feel so special. She's so lucky to have such a great group of kids to play with. I know she had a blast getting to have everyone over.