Happy Birthday Marissa!

I can't believe our little girl is growing up so fast! This year for Marissa's 4th birthday we decided we to give her a real birthday party with friends and she was so excited!



The first thing the girls had to do was find different "princess" things around the yard so they could all be little princesses for the party. Here is Marissa with her crown, necklace, ring, and earrings.

After her party, Marissa and I went out for ice cream. She still had much of her princess stuff on and the lady at the ice cream store thought she was an adorable princess!



Here are all the little girls "princessified"!



The next thing the girls had to do was save Princess Marissa from the horrible green dragon that had come to take her away. The girls were given pink and purple water balloons with which to pelt the dragon to scare him away. Here is one of Marissa's friends trying to save her from the dragon! Fortunately for him, the dragon said they were all lousy shots!



With craftiness beyond their years, the princesses then cornered the green dragon on top of the swing set, forcing him to make his escape down the slide. Unfortunately, the slide did not survive this encounter:)!

Then the girls went inside to decorate their sugar cookie star princess wands. I didn't get any pictures of these, but let me just say there was a lot of pink and purple stuff involved!



Marissa is opening her first present at her party to find a princess slipper game (love the face!). Since then this has become the favorite game and involves seeing who can get all of their cards enchanted first so their Cinderella can attend the ball. For some reason, Ryan and I are just not very good princesses so we never get to go to the ball and Marissa loves being the 'honored' princess!



Here's Marissa in front of her loot later that evening - presents from grandparents and us.



And finally to top the day off, we had a chocolate pudding cake (Marissa looks exhausted!) and I was too!