It's official..Maile is 3 yrs old

We ended up having her birthday party on the 30th of August despite the fact that she was born on the 31st. Her actual birthday fell on a Monday and with everybody working that day it just wouldn't have worked.

I've known we were gonna do a princess party for Maile for at least a few months now ever since she started really getting into the whole disney princess thing. Actually the whole thing started for her when she watched "Sleeping Beauty" for the first time. She was absolutely mesmerized and from then on...we knew we were "in trouble". She must've watched this movie at least a hundred times since then and she is able to reproduce almost every scene in the movie. Her favorite however is when Aurora pricks her finger and she falls asleep. It's adorable watching her try to find any old thing around the house that she can "prick" her finger on and fall asleep while waiting for her prince ( usually daddy but sometimes Audrey or me) to kiss her on the cheek and wake her up. Oh and I should mention this whole routine usually happens upstairs so that she can complete the last scene in the movie where "Sleeping Beauty" ( her) and her prince ( daddy) come down the stairs holding hands and finish with a beautiful dance.

I won't even go into explaining how Cinderella ended up in her mind as being "Sleeping Beauty" while the actual "Sleeping Beauty" is just simply Aurora....perhaps because this one princess has so many names throughout the movie...from Aurora to Rose to "Sleeping Beauty" to the final scene where the fairy God-mothers change her dress color from pink to blue and back and forth.

Well, somehow we hardly ever try to correct her on the actual name of whatever princess she might be pointing to and we even let her go with the same thing during our recent trip to Disneyland where she actually got to meet Ariel, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. Bottom line is...I've known what the theme for Maile's 3yr party was gonna be and no matter what you call it she had a blast.

I ended up renting a Disney Princesses Castle Bouncer complete with misters on the inside so that it would help with this horrible heat in AZ while the kids were in there bouncing and playing.

Daddy did an awesome job decorating the house with all sorts of princess related decorations that Maile absolutely loved.

Ever since I joined the MOMS Club in Gilbert more than a year ago we have been blessed with a bunch of really incredible friends. I love the fact that these kids spend so much time together getting to know each other, some of them she even goes to preschool with. That makes for some great friendships and really great parties.

All in all I think we had about 35-40 people in our house that day. For the food I decided to go with something simple and ordered petite sandwiches from Sprouts. I then made a chinese salad to go with that and I also had a fresh fruit platter.

For the cake I decided to go with this princess castle cake since I am not much of a baker myself...it's not really the baking part that intimidates me it's more the actual decorating. Well...Maile loved it and the great thing about that is she still plays with the little figurines that came with it...and she has enough that she can share with her sister too.

Oh, and Maile had her first little updo on this day as well. I had asked my neighbour friend who does my hair if she could help me make her look a bit more special and she was more than happy to do that. I was really nervous because Maile's not always thrilled at the idea of even blow drying her hair so to think about using a hot iron...I thought for sure she wasn't gonna let me do it but to my suprise she sat down and as her curls got prettier and prettier you could see her face light up while she was still playing with her Leapster princess game.

We always seem to take so many pictures especially on their birthdays and here are some of my favorites.

Thank you to everybody who made it to our party and helped us make Maile's day that much more special. Thank you for all the awesome presents that she got. She will be playing with those for quite a while...