On March 2nd, our sweet Adley girl turned THREE! We celebrated with a large group of family on the weekend before her birthday. Adley was so excited when she saw her purple ice cream cake. I think she was especially pleased about the M&M's!
We love our new three year old!
Because our family group is already quite large, we kept the invitees to just relatives this year. We were excited that Grandpa and Grandma joined us all the way from Minnesota, too. Once everyone arrived, all of the kids sat down to decorate their Blue Bell ice cream hats.
The kids used markers, crayons, stickers, and dot painters to spice up their hats.
There were enough ice cream hats to pass around to everyone!
When the kids finished their hats, I gave them playdough mats which depicted a large ice cream dish. The kids used playdough to create ice cream sundaes and then topped their sundaes with sprinkles (cut straws), cherries (pom poms), and candy (pony beads). Yum! :)
Here is the cousin crew, wearing their fancy colorful hats!
Next on the agenda was a scavenger hunt. We paired each of the younger kids with an older cousin so they'd have help finding the ice cream pics hung around our property.
The younger kiddos marked off the items on a checklist as they were found. We were so proud of how the older kids patiently helped their younger cousins!
Then, Jason led the group in a few games. First, the kids used paper cones to pass an "ice cream" ball down the line to one another.
For the next game, kids raced to carry a ball in their paper cone across the driveway. It was so fun seeing Adley's enthusiasm with these games!
After that, we played the ice cream version of duck, duck, goose-- rocky, rocky, road. Jason had Adley demonstrate, and she purposely took one LARGE lap around the entire yard (instead of just around the circle), giggling the whole way. Goofy kid!
Our last big project was an adventurous one with this whole group-- making homemade ice cream! We figured it'd be doable with so many helpful adults. Hooray for a wonderful, willing family! In small groups, we had the kids measure out the ice cream ingredients into a bag.
Then, the groups put the ice cream bags into large buckets of ice, added ice cream salt, and started SHAKING!!
Eventually, the melting ice started leaking out of the buckets, so we took the mess outside. My brother Andrew decided we needed to motivate the kids a bit with the shaking process, so he made up a few impromtu relay races. The kids LOVED this and were much more productive in their ice cream making!
As the pictures show, everyone worked so hard to shake up their buckets-- the ice cream turned out thick and delicious! We scooped the homemade ice cream into our Blue Bell cups and added some sprinkles for the win.
Ice cream before dinner?? Dee-licious!!
After a pasta dinner, it was time for even more dessert. But first, we needed to sing to the birthday girl!
I know I'm posting a ridiculous number of cake photos here, but Adley's expressions were so precious that I couldn't pick just one! Our little girl knew EXACTLY what her role was as the birthday girl-- ha!
And finally, because it was a Blue Bell sponsored party, we had to serve Blue Bell ice cream along with the cake, of course! We offered a variety of ice cream flavors and tons of topping options for sundaes. Yum, yum!
After Adley's party, I made a little photo collage to send to our new friends at Blue Bell. They loved it and offered to give Adley a VIP tour whenever she wanted to visit the Blue Bell factory. :) So fun!
What a special day to celebrate our special little girl.
Happy #3 Adley-girl! We love you!
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