Treasure Hunt Birthday Party

Rebecca's most frequent choice of activity when playing by herself or with others is to "make a party" - which basically means she makes a HUGE mess and strings "decorations" (clothes, toilet paper - now a no-no, etc.) all over her room, makes a little fort, puts out some pretend food, delivers invitations to guests, sometimes there are games, gifts - she'll re-purpose anything for one of her parties. So when we talked about what she might like to do for her birthday party I was given the following ideas: do art, have an Easter egg hunt, have a tea party, princess, it should be fancy, build a fort, play in the sprinkler on the trampoline...I think there may have been others but I've forgotten. Needless to say it was hard to pin her down. We finally came up with a treasure hunt (because she kept going back to finding Easter eggs) with a little art thrown in...Daughter is happy because it was "her" idea. Mommy is happy because it's easy-enough to pull off. 

 It was our regular crew plus her special friend Caleb (and family) - who came in full pirate regalia. Love that kid! They decorated their pirate booty bags right next to each other.

Owen chatting it up with his future brother-in-law.

 The actual treasure hunt in the backyard was surprisingly civil considering it was a bunch of kiddos running around looting candy and Oriental Trading trinkets off of gold doilies. Not so civil that I have pictures of it. :)

But then their attention turned to the bubble maker. It's the simple things in life...

 Rebecca just taking it all in.

 Pretending to be bashfull for about 0.05 seconds.

 Putting on some of her booty.

 I think we all had a great morning - we got the party (and most of the clean-up!) done before it got too terribly hot. My party princess felt the love of having so many family/friends around to do some of her favorite things - make art and find treasure! (And as evidence that they know her well - 95% of her gifts were art kids which we are blowing through.) We're going to miss this girl at four...I wouldn't mind her staying right where she is for a good long while.

Oh, and here she is with "Rose Princess Bear" - she made her at build-a-bear with Bee for her birthday. She is very very very colorful. Just like Rebecca. :)