Sage's Family Birthday Party

We've done big parties for Sage for 2 years in a row now, and they were awesome. She loved them, and I was glad to do them for her. But this year, I just wanted to do something a little more simple and not pay $100s to rent out some venue. I just wanted to do a "regular" birthday party with family and people that we knew! For 2 years, I've chased kids (some I barely knew at the time) around a swimming pool, and it was great, but I wanted to slow it down a bit. I told Sage that we could have a few of her friends and go somewhere fun like Chuck E. Cheese or spend the night here, but the American Girl idea formed, so we had a family party here on Friday (day after her birthday) with cake, ice cream, and pizzas. Simple. Kind of. As simple as anything can be.

While Sage was at school, I attempted to make my house sanitary for company. I'm definitely a "Martha," and I have a really hard time just accepting that it's fine as it is, in this case, my house, but I did finally say, "This is as good as it's going to get." After that, Mom and I went to the party store and got a dozen balloons and a Hello Kitty balloon since that was the cake that Sage chose. Sage has loved balloons since she was a baby, so I've always had balloons for her birthday. I love simple things that bring joy.

This is before anyone got there. She was so thrilled with her "set-up." These are Sage's sweet friends. I love these girls, Lydia and Cailin, and their mommies. Lydia, on the left, has taken dance with Sage since right before Sage turned 3, and I liked her mom, Suzanne, instantly. When Sage and Lydia switched from that dance studio, we met Cailin and Jill, who had just moved from Atlanta when I was pregnant with Jaggar. It's wonderful to have friends with children with the same values and standards that you have.

Alex (with the hat) is Cailin's dad and had just gotten back from the Auburn championship game, so you can guess what they are talking about. Wade, Lydia's dad, is the operating manager of.....wait for it....CHICK-FIL-A in Oxford, so you can guess that we had an instant connection when we met years ago.

Suzanne, my mom, and Jill
*We had both sets of in-laws, Meagan and Kylie (who are on the next post), and 2 people and a baby that I'd not seen before (???...I really don't know) in the den that I didn't get pictures of at least in this post. But they were there!

Her cake! Does it look familiar? Yep, she chose the same cake that she had last year. I think she's like me in that she remembers good things and likes to recreate them. Our walmart was out of the pieces to make it. So she chose a Tangled cake, which they were also out of. So I just told them that we'd go somewhere else. I called the Walmart in Saks, and they did have the hello kitty cake, and Sage was thrilled.

Singing Happy Birthday :)

Blowing out her "6" candle, which she also chose. After seeing Jesus' "0" candle, she told me that she would like a 6 on her cake, so that's what we did.

Jaggar. Not singing.

Cailin had another party to go to, so she gave Sage her gift before she left.

She got shrinky dinks (which I've never heard of, but mom and Jill were raving on them, evidenced by Jill's face in this pic), paperoni sets, paints and paper. Sage can't wait to do these projects!

Jill and me: love this girl
She has my same dry humor, and I've never offended her yet, which is more than I can say for a lot of people that know me other than on the surface haha. ;)