Happy Birthday Ella!

Let the celebration begin! For the first stop on the Ella birthday tour, we went out to lunch with Val. We went to the Buckhorn and had lunch and milkshakes, nice relaxing 2 hour lunch! Valerie got Ella a beautiful gift that Ella had picked out, some "princess slippers" as Ella calls them:
I am holding Valerie personally responsible for any kind of shoe fetish this child ends up with!
Somehow these pictures ended up backwards in here and I'm not sure how to fix it. Anyway together with my mom, we got Ella a new bike for her birthday this year. Because Cliff is leaving early on her birthday, she got her present on Saturday, the day of her party. She wanted one with streamers and a bell. Here are her and Micah at 7:30am taking a test drive on the new bike:

Ella enjoying her new ride:
We left it in the garage and asked her to go out and find something for us, here she is with the bike:
This year for her party Ella requested "Tinkerbell cupcakes" because I now refuse to purchase a birthday cake, this is my stab at purple Tinkerbell cupcakes:
A shot of the bike the night before in the garage:
Saturday was also the day of her party, these pictures also ended up backwards....oh well! We went to the East end of Donner Lake this time, to Ella's favorite beach. There is boat only access, so we had to shuttle everyone over. We had a nice mellow time on the beach. Here is Ella and her friends blowing out her candles, Colton helped a lot!

Micah surfing at the lake:
I love birthday parties, but I HATE goody bags. There is something about handing the kids a plastic bag full of useless plastic toys and candy that just feel wrong to me. For Ella's party this year we got all the girls swim rings and the boys beach balls. We put them each in a little brown box and hid them. I made a treasure map and the kids had a blast having a little "treasure hunt" to go and find their goodies. Here are the girls swimming in their new rings: The girls in their rings, from left, Kaelin, Ella, Tessa, Summer and Cora
Ella on her way to the party in the boat, so excited!
Summer and Tessa enjoying their cupcakes:

Ella and Cora:
Ella and her cupcake:
All the girls and Micah on the tube. Nice work Micah, its going to be a hard life for him!

Colton and his cupcake face:
Tiny little Peyton is pretty in pink:

Sorry for the confused picture order! Ella's birthday was a success and we even had some smoke free skies for most of it!