Happy 4th Birthday Claire!

This year was the first year I remember one of my kids asking for a birthday party at such a young age. Maelyn and Jaden either didn't know about birthday parties at this age or they just didn't care. A couple months ago, Claire attended her first birthday party for a friend and ever since then she has talked so much about her party. Because she was so stinking cute and excited about it, I decided to do a party for her. Birthday parties are not my favorite things to do but how could I turn down an excited little girl? When I asked her who she wanted to invite, she told me mostly boys. How was I supposed to do a girly party with mostly boys? After searching online we decided on a girly pirate theme. Here is the template we used for her invitations. Cute, huh? Then I went from there decorating in black and pink and then doing pirate activities.
Here is the cute birthday girl before the party started. She was so excited before it started. (Sorry about the squinty eyes! She is now "posing" for me and she wouldn't stop squinting)

More pictures before the party

Decorations

Once the kids got here we started the party off with making a parrot out of a paper and a toilet paper roll. I had the pieces all cut out so all they had to do was glue the pieces on. Even with using glue sticks this ended up being more messy and more complicated than I thought it would be. The finished product turned out cute though!
The next activity was "Toss the cannon ball" into the bucket. I had styrofoam balls that I painted black that they tossed into a bucket. After that they played "Pin the flag on the treasure map".
Then we played "Collect the jewelry with the pirate hook". Claire was the only one who cheated and used her other hand to help her out. I guess it was her birthday so she could cheat if she wanted to. After that we did the classic "Pass the parcel" game with some pirate music. The last game we did was "Walk the plank". The kids LOVED this game even though there was really no point other than to walk across the board without falling into the "ocean".
After all the games we opened the presents. Claire LOVED this part of course. She is so funny because she opens her gift really fast and then throws it over the side of the couch so she can open her next gift. I guess we need to work on her manners a little bit.

Here are my pirate helpers and Claire blowing out her candles.

Claire had a pretty good turn out for her party. We invited 5 boys and 3 girls but only 2 boys and 3 girls came. It was actually the perfect size. Having six 3-4 year olds was plenty! The last thing I wanted to do was take a picture of all the kids who came to the party. Trying to take a picture of six kids in their pirate hats was pretty hard. Most of the kids hated the patches so they wouldn't leave them alone. The first picture shows how the majority of the pictures turned out.

Corbin had them show their "Pirate Muscles".

Finally the "best" picture with a few funny faces!

We all had a great time and Claire told me it was the "Best birthday ever!" so I think the day was a success. I really can't believe my baby is 4 years old already. We are really lucky to have such a spunky and full of life child to keep us on our toes. We love our Boo-Boo!