celebrating

**I'm sorry this has taken me so long to post this.  One of my cameras wasn't speaking to my computer.  Apparently they've made up; here you go**

We celebrated Caroline's birthday with her friends from school at our house this past weekend.  She has been asking for a "Tangled" theme party for a while, so we obliged.  The girls did lots of just "playing", eating snacks, singing Happy Birthday, eating cupcakes, cake, and ice cream, opening gifts, and eating more cake.

I shamelessly borrowed lots of ideas from Supermom for the party and it all turned out great.  Caroline was happy with it all, which is the most important ruler to measure success for her party.

Starting with her invitations, I followed this post for a Rapunzel Tower invitation.

I also made the braid for the door.  Caroline was pretty impressed with this touch; in fact it's hanging on her bedroom door now.

The food was pretty simple; snacks that 6 year old girls would enjoy: goldfish, grapes, oranges, bread and cheese.  For a little subtle touch of Tangled, I used a couple of cast iron frying pans to serve some of the food.  I also made the jello boats and for decoration, the Tangled banner and added Caroline's choices of some store-bought Tangled decor.

The girls colored some Tangled coloring pages and ate snacks as everyone arrived.  Our first big activity was climbing Rapunzel's tower (using the "climbing wall" Jeff made for the girls on one of our trees in the backyard).  Caroline climbed first to show everyone how it was done with Jeff belaying of course.  Then all of the girls who wanted to try took turns making the big climb up.  Several of them did it more than once; it was a hit!

After that, the girls honestly had a lot of fun just playing in the back yard:  jumping on the trampoline, sliding, swinging, and driving the Barbie Jeep Powerwheels.  We had a few other inside activities for the kids who wanted a break from the heat, but it took having ice cream, cake, and cupcakes (the BEST cupcakes ever actually) and then opening presents to get everyone back inside.

Caroline had a great time, had some wonderful friends over, received fantastic gifts, and all in all, hopefully had a memorable 6th birthday party at our house.  We love our Caroline!