And now she is 4

Lara turned 4 on Saturday and we had a blowout in her honor. Here she is in the first of the day's three outfits, most revolving around this fairy dress that was thematically repurposed to fit with the party's theme: Princesses and Pirates.



I assembled four random images found through Google into this invitation graphic...



...which I also blew up to be a face-in-the-hole photo op thing. Gus and Lara demonstrate the awesomeness:



Pirate hats and princess crowns for one and all!



Jakey reminisces about pirate days gone by:



The balloons started as decorations on the wall, but were quickly cannibalized into a super fun stampede-cum-dance:



Juliet rocks all the available the accessories:



Here, the gaggle of children fresh from the balloon madness are calmed by the pull-string pinata. I love that they were raising their hands for turns! I filled the pinata with gold- and silver-foiled candy, some pieces of eight, and bejeweled rings.... a theme that was pretty much only picked up on by my friend Sheri (and thus was worth it!).



I also used the invitation images to decorate the cupcakes (by printing out the pictures and gluing them onto toothpicks). Lara was totally overwhelmed when everyone was singing "Happy Birthday" - look at this face:



And here, a cupcake closeup:



Ah, what a totally wonderful, exhausting, somewhat dreamlike day! I still can't quite believe we have a four year-old... but I know that every day she is a exhilarating, baffling, joyful, awe-inspiring, maddening, terribly beloved creature. Happy Birthday, little girl!