May Days...

Another busy month to report! The school had their annual carnival early in the month. The district had recently lifted their ban on inflatable slides, so the organizer hired a service to set up inflatables and a few rides. I volunteered for an hour and somehow got put behind the dunk tank!! I had to take tickets from those that didn't have wrist bands and help them in and out. And in the meantime I got pretty soaked! Steve took the girls around while I helped out for an hour.
Emily decided to try throwing a couple of times.
Then she got brave enough to get dunked!! I was surprised, but she loved it!!
E&E on a ride.
Ella is really getting so grown-up and is looking so beautiful! Thought we'd take advantage of sunny day to get some Sunday pics of her.
The Sunday before her birthday, I did a fancy princess bun for her. She was excited to get sung to. She got a lot of compliments!
I started planning her birthday early, since I know the end of May is CRAZY busy! The girls and eventually Steve helped me cut and braid an 18 foot long braid of yarn!! It's not as easy as it looks in the movie! Ella spent the next few days with it tied to her hair and running and dancing around the house.
Here's the invitations we made. I spent so long braiding all the DMC floss that I didn't have time to dress up the castle any more.
Here's some of our decorations. I cut out purple triangles from felt and sewed them all together in a banner. I printed out a bunch of yellow suns and Steve and I cut them out while watching all the season finale shows! I put them through my sticker maker and voila! Sun banners just like in Rapunzel's town.
I strung 70 feet of yellow streamers around the room to show how long Rapunzel's hair was in the movie.
I even splurged and bought 5 paper lanterns with LED lights in them and hung them around along with some homemade ones I made.
I also printed off coloring packets for each kid. We hung them all around the room just like all the wanted posters in the movie. The kids took one down and colored it while waiting for all the kids to arrive. They even got to draw in a funny nose for Flynn.
The party room.
I even lucked out by not having to make a cake this time. Ella loves donuts, so I bought 3 dozen donuts, a dowel and a sugar cone. I stuck the dowel in a bucket of beans, covered it with a green cloth and decorated it with flowers to look like a hill, stacked the donuts and added a frosted sugar cone! It was a great concept, but I didn't take into consideration the weight of the donuts! We had to lean it against the wall for support and tape fishing line to the wall to keep it upright! We had one scary fall, but luckily Steve was nearby and caught it! Also the donuts on bottom got flatter and flatter as the party went on and the tower ended up floating in mid-air!
We added Ella's Rapunzel Polly doll and some yellow ribbon for hair!
I searched EVERYWHERE for a Rapunzel dress for Ella to wear. Unfortunately the ones at Target/Walmart were too small. And the Disney Store was back ordered for over 2 months! Apparently there were none in the entire country - even Disneyland and Disney World! Poor planning on their part! So she was happy with a purple dress from Emily.
Ella invited a bunch of friends, but I say, the more the merrier! We started with coloring.
We even colored the walls since Rapunzel likes to paint the walls of her tower.
Next I had a large Flynn Rider wanted poster and we blindfolded all the kids and had them pin a frying pan on Flynn Rider!
Since they did so good getting Flynn Rider, they each got to find their own frying pan hidden around the room and make a frying pan necklace. I made the frying pans by spray painting a baby food jar lid black and hot glueing a loop of black pipe cleaner to it! The necklaces looked cute! I'll need to go find one and get a finished picture!
Next they got to make floating lanterns. They cut slits in some scrapbook paper and I stapled it together for them. Again, I'll need to get a picture of a finished lantern.
Then we all made a Pascal chameleon. I just cut out Pascals head shape from fun foam and glued them together with a party blower for a tongue. The kids added googly eyes and drew on facial features. We all used the blower to wake Flynn up by flicking the tongue at the wanted poster. I'll post a picture later.

And, of course, we had to play a game called Tangled! Each pair of kids got a roll of yellow streamers and got to tangle each other up. They loved it once they realized it was all in fun!
Then I told all the kids to gather up all the streamers and cover Ella up! She loved all the attention!
Next was present time!
We sent the kids outside for the donuts and ice cream. This was the first party I didn't overplan, so we had some freetime before the parents came. I gathered the kids for a quick game of "Maximus, Maximus, Are you hungry?" (The horse.) They loved it, especially since you can see I kind of got into it!!
There you go...all that fun for the price of party blowers, yellow streamers, donuts and a dowel! It really pays being a craft hoarder!!

On Ella's real birthday she woke up to streamers and presents!
She got to celebrate at Preschool AND Kindergarten! Later that night we we headed out on the town for some more fun! We ate dinner at IHOP and we got to Chuck E. Cheese (LOVED going on a weeknight - I didn't even get a headache!)
We stopped at Toys R Us where we had to order a Eugene barbie doll since they were all out of stock of that as well! I think she had a good 6th birthday!!

Another big deal at our house was the removing of the kitchen floor and laying new tile! Steve did it weekend by weekend. The first weekend he removed the baseboards.
The next weekend he removed the warped laminate floor.
The next weekend he removed the linoleum.
Then this last weekend he took off two days and had a 5 day weekend to lay the tile!! It was a HUGE job, but he's done a GREAT JOB! We had to have all the appliances and furniture in the living room for about a week and we finally got it all put back last night. With all the eating we did in the living room, I'm thinking next week we'll need to get the carpets cleaned!! He still has caulking to do as well as replacing all the baseboards. And some more cleanup as there's grout all over the walls and cupboards. Also, while Steve was moving the dishwasher around, some of the hard water buildup must have broken loose and the dishwasher refused to drain. Turns out there were two tubes COMPLETELY blocked with hard water buildup and maybe soap scum as well as the drain in the dishwasher itself. However, we've had soft water for over a year now, so it's been like that for awhile. A tube cracked while Steve was cleaning it and we discovered it's a $50 tube!! Hopefully when all is said and done our dishwasher will work like new again! Anyways, I love how the tile looks and my now "empty" living room! Here's some progress pics.
The backer board.

The living room/dining room/kitchen.
Cleaning out the mortar so he can grout. The girls were very good helpers through the whole process!
Washing the tiles.
We'll get finished pictures later!
Reading to my girls...one of our new favorite books!
Lots of end of the year activities! This was Dalmation Day at Kindergarten. Do you like my 5 minute costume? They got to watch the movie in class.
I think it's rained about 25/31 days this month!! We've gotten a lot of use out of our umbrellas!
Such a good daddy, letting his girls make him over!!
Another big event this month was the end of preschool and graduation! Here's Ella's 3rd graduation pic! Love her hair-do? She's been doing her hair on her own every now and again!
The girls helped me blow up all the animals for graduation. And had fun playing with them!
I had some young men help me unload the car and set up all the chairs at the Senior Center. Then some Young Women came to help me decorate and take care of refreshments.
The picture staging area.
DVDs and diploma table.
Refreshment tables.
Ella got shy right at the beginning and had a hard time smiling for awhile. The kids did a great job and were pretty hilarious! One boy was singing at the top of his lungs and crying loudly at the same time!! It was so funny. After the first song and stopped and asked him what was wrong. He said there were no binoculars behind him. He was so worried he wouldn't get one! Another girl yelled out, "I'm not allowed to cry because I have mascara on!" Later she yelled, "Wait, Miss Kim, my shoe fell off!" Mind you, that was in the middle of a song! Another boy threw up while we were getting our gowns on. He'd been miserable the whole night, but his mother insisted that he was just nervous. I think there may have been something else going on!!
Waiting for their diplomas.
Natalia!
The crowd.
Tanna.
Graduates!
Ella!
And of course, there was my birthday!! My favorite part was the new tile, of course, but mostly because Steve spent most of my birthday on his hands and knees! What a guy! I had a sleepover downstairs with the big girls. Steve woke up early and hung streamers, a happy birthday sign, went shopping for presents, wrapped them and served us McDonalds in bed (since we didn't have a functioning kitchen.) What a great way to start the day! I also got some earrings and a deep fryer. I've been wanting to make donuts and scones lately! Can't wait to try it!
We also went to Lynn's house for a BBQ. I also enjoyed the magic show put on by Lynn's kids and the impromptu magic tricks by everyone else after that!! Nothing like watching 2-7 year olds trying to do magic! We went carpet shopping after that, but decided to live with the basement carpet a bit longer. I got to play some games with my family! What a great day!!
Trying to blow out the trick candles!
Eden loves dogs.
Ella loves her new shoes from Lynnie.
Eden's still excited about the potty. Soon I may just go for it and do the transition!
We're excited for the last 2 days of school and for SUMMER!!! I'm doing pretty good on my 5K training. I'm in the middle of week 5 out of 9. My knees are taking it the hardest. I wish I'd been eating better lately and had lost 5 pounds instead of gaining 5! Just another thing to work on!! Thanks for recapping May with us!!