Third and final birthday-palooza!

We always have a small "friend" birthday celebration when we get back from Michigan each summer.  Summer birthday + neighborhood pool = easy, cheap party.  This year's friend party theme was "beach".   Kendra invited her four besties (one was out of town and couldn't come) for a swim and sleepover.  For the favors we did sand pails with a bag of Goldfish and a fun beach-themed water bottle.

We started out at the pool.  My friend Missie came to hang with me while the girls swam (bonus--friend time for me, too!).   We came home and did the revolving door shower for all.

Showered up--they all wanted side pony tails.  :-)

 Kendra opened her gifts from her friends.   She got some fun stuff!  Check out that darling little denim purse!

Then I put all the girls in the car and we went to Pizza Garden which is a pizza buffet place.  The girls loaded up with pizza, salad, and sodas.  I usually just get Little Caesar's cheapo pizzas, but this was nice because there was zero cleanup for me!

We decided to do something different for dessert this year.  I usually make a cake or cupcakes (which I did for Palooza #1) but we thought it would be fun for Kendra to teach her besties some of the skills she learned in our cake decorating class last spring.  So I made beachy cut-out sugar cookies and Kendra taught the girls how to use a star tip to decorate them.  They got to pick which colors we made, and they did a really great job.  They got to make a couple to eat that night and then I put the rest of what they made in clear treat bags for them to take home to their families.

The set-up

Kendra doing the demo..."We have our bag at 12:00"  She sounded just like our instructor! 

H having a go at the palm tree cookie

R & K concentrating hard!

Check out these beauties!

Candles don't go in cookies, so we had Kendra just hold 'em!

All sugared up and ready to go, we played "Spin the Nail Polish Bottle", a game I read about online.  We picked out many colors of polish, and the girls sat in a square (four people = square, not circle).  We used a pie plate and the girls took turns spinning a color of polish they pulled randomly from a bag.  When the polish stopped spinning the girl who the cap was pointing to had to paint one nail that color.  They had a great time doing this!

We wrapped up the festivities with a theme-appropriate movie--"Soul Surfer".  FANTASTIC movie, the girls loved it.  Of course, popcorn and Root Beer are necessities for movies and our hound dog Grady had oodles of fun nabbing the pieces of popcorn the girls tossed for him.

We had pancakes for breakfast and the girls all made bracelets from the kit that H had given to Kendra as a gift.  Another successful celebration.  Whew!  That's the last one!  :-)