Happy Birthday Bella!

Happy Birthday to my most fabulous little Bella! For those of you who keep up on my kid's birthdays, (none of you :)) it is not actually Bella's birthday yet. But with Ryan working two jobs and only home on the weekends, we thought we'd pick one of the Saturdays around her birthday and tell her that was the day. It's not much of a fun birthday spending the day at home with mom as usual. So we did her little paper chain countdown up to Saturday and declared that the big day! She was sooooo excited for her birthday to come. We wanted to make it a really fun day for her, so we started out swimming, one of Bella's favorite things to do. My sister, Stefanie, her husband, Travis, and their kids came. My brother, David, came, along with Ryan's parents and his brother and sister, Paul and Lara. We had a blast swimming for a couple of hours.

We put a life jacket on Evan and Ryan just laid him in the water and he floated around like this almost the entire time. It was pretty hilarious! He was so chill and we just pushed him around the pool. He barely even moved!

This is Bella's cake. It's simple, because I haven't decorated a cake for quite a while! I did a small round with some cupcakes to go with it. I was trying to go for the TinkerBell theme, because most of the gifts that we got her were TinkerBell, but Bella pitched a fit in the store and wanted Ariel, and it was for her birthday, so.... I caved! Ariel it was!

After swimming, we went back to my parent's house and had pizza and cake and ice cream. My brother, Ryan and his wife Sarah came over too.

All the cake for me!

Bella blowing out her candles.

My mom got some fun stuff at the dollar store to entertain Bella with! She got some wings, a hat, and a little skirt. They had gone to have fun at the dollar store the night before with my sister. Her real gift was a princess game book with cool little princess magnets and stuff, which I neglected to take a picture of! But I think Bella may have liked the wings better than anything all day!

My mom also found a big giant gift bag at the dollar store that she gave Bella her presents in. After she had opened everything, she loaded everything into her bag and lugged it around. It was kind of funny to watch!

Grandma and Grandpa Jubber got Bella a couple of new movies, some crayons and markers, paper, and scissors so she could have some coloring fun. Ryan and I also got her a couple of movies, including the Tinker Bell movie, and a Tinker Bell sticker book. I also made her some Tinker Bell pajama pants and a Tinker Bell quilt. She's been really into Tinker Bell lately, if you couldn't tell! I think overall, she brought in a pretty good haul for her birthday. I also got her a few mylar princess balloons because that was what she requested several weeks ago for her birthday. I got Ariel, Tinker Bell, and a castle one with all the princesses in the windows.

So needless to say, we have a little girl that loves princesses!! And it's so much fun!

Now, some of you may be wondering if it was wise for me to go all out like this when we're dirt poor, so I will justify myself! Ryan and I have been a little blue lately, just dealing with the stress of our situation and feeling very pressured about what to do in the future. We've had a lot on our minds and I hate to admit it, but I don't think we've been very fun parents :( So, when Bella was so excited about her birthday, we decided that we were gonna take a reason to celebrate and run with it. So we did. And I have to say, it was kind of worth it! We had such a great day and Bella was so happy. And I still feel good. I had one of the best days today than I've had in a while. Chalk it up to an awesome princess birthday party! And I have to admit, I'm kind of excited to top it next year!