Anna's 4th Birthday

Anna had a great 4th birthday.  It was more like the 7 days of Anna's birthday, which I am sure she didn't mind at all.  I guess that is what you get with your birthday being so close to Halloween.
We had Anna's friend party on the Saturday before her birthday.  She has talked about this party for months.  She is a party planner!  She picked Blues Clues for the theme.   It was very important that we have fancy napkins and party hats.  I am so glad that she is easy to please.

We picked some simple but fun games.  (Yes the teacher in me gets really excited and plans and organizes so everything can run smoothly.)

We played Pass Blue, just like Hot Potato.  Rather than have the person be "out" if they ended up with Blue, Anna wanted that person to get a treat.

Then we played Blues Clues.  Thanks to my sister-in-law's awesome design I made Handy Dandy Notebooks for all the kids.  They loved looking for clues and then drawing them in their notebooks.

I was smart and made one for Nicholas too.

After that we played Blues Clues Bingo.

Nicholas, who should have been sleeping, was sometimes "really helpful."

It is a good thing Devin was there to help out with Nicholas.  It is also good that Nicholas is so cute!

Our last game was with Shovel and Pail.  I dumped my fuzzy balls out and all the kids had shovels and the scooped them into the buckets.  The object was just to get all the fuzzy balls into the bucket.  They loved this!

We then opened presents and had cake.

It was a really fun party.  I am so grateful that Anna has so many cute friends.  I wish we could have them all over to play more often.  They really are a fun bunch of kids.  I can't even imagine how much fun primary is with all of them.

Anna's birthday was the following Monday.
She was excited to open her presents.

We met Devin at the temple at lunchtime to take her temple birthday pictures.
Anna was being herself.

 Yes, that leaf is in her mouth.  Oh silly girl!

Devin took some great shots.  It was tricky because it was Monday and the gates were closed because the temple is closed on Mondays.  They were also doing some work on the exterior of the temple.  It was pretty interesting watching them rip up a tree.  Even with all the distractions we have some great pictures.

The last two were pretty funny.  I had the thought too bad we couldn't put her up on top of one of the pillars.  Well, Devin had the same idea, and the guts to do it.  I love these two pictures.  I am sure the people driving by thought we were crazy putting Anna up on top.

It is fun to think that she is 1/3 of the way to being able to go into the temple.
That night we had Anna's favorite dinner Hawaiian Haystacks.  Then we had more cake.

The next day Grandma took her to lunch for her birthday and then they celebrated her birthday on Thursday in Preschool.  It was a busy fun week.  She enjoyed every second of it.  Happy Fourth Birthday Anna!