Coming of age, a whooping THREE!

My first baby turned three July 18th. She is so big and strangely enough i wasn't totally sad that she's growing up.

There's so many new talents coming out of her daily (aside from random fits), learning what it is to kind, sweet, loving, helpful. Everything just continues to blossom in her and instead of being sad the baby baby in her is leaving, i was excited to celebrate her achievements in learning and in her ability to have "big girl" responsibilities. 

I think nothing can be sweeter than watching your child love the idea of taking on new (slightly) 'bigger' responsibilities and tasks and learning opportunities. 

So when it comes to birthday parties ... I'm not crazy about spending tons of money, i'm more of a spend tons of quality time with some fun special touches to make it that much more enjoyable. I'd like to think my girls love what i do for them, but i'm sure with a few more years they'll actually tell me so. We'll see if my ideas are in line with theirs, everyone's different, right.

So here's a few pictures from the party. 

We had the Kammerer's, the Stephens, Mawma & Pawpaw, Gigi & Grumpy, Davidson Cousin's over to celebrate with us. 

Instead of cake or cupcakes, we had 2 donut cakes, one with chocolate frosting, one with cherry frosting. I made some butterfly sugar cookies with a glazed type frosting, quite delicious. 

Almost everyone had 1 to 2 temporary butterfly tattoos on their arms (babies included). 

I made a collage of pictures of Halle from year 2 going on to year 3.

I made goodie bags, with some butterflys on them with lots of candies, plastic butterflies for play, butterfly tattoos, decorated pin wheels, and bubbles. 

I put butcher paper down on the table so everyone could color. 

But aside from those things, all the kiddos just played and played and adored each new toy Halle opened in her stack of presents. Overall success for a 3 year old, i think. :)

Almost forgot to add the cutest pictures of my reds "year of 2, going on 3"