Unfailing Love: The BIG party!!

Vincent Gerard

This is my hubby. Also known as Vinny, Dowey, Dowebally, and (as of last night) Pickle Juice. (You may learn that I have an affinity for nicknames, comes from my daddy!) Unbelievably, the hubs and I have been married for 9 years! I can't believe it! Seems like just yesterday I was a freshman in college and my friend introduced me to this hunky senior with a hot red car! Vince is working hard to support our family and traveling here and there. Vince is a WONDERFUL father and his girls (all of us) are the most important things to him!

Barclay Kathryn

What to say? I'm Barclay, usually known as Barclay (not much you can do with Barclay). I was an elementary teacher for fours years until I had Bella. Now I am doing the job I have wanted to do ALL of my life, being a mom. I love these two girls more than I can possibly express and it is my joy and privilege to be able to spend each day with them. I recently entered the blog frontier, and although my blog followers will probably be able to be counted on one hand, I thought it would be exciting to be a part of something so neat. I love that there are many other moms out there facing the same joys, hardships, questions, surprises, and challenges that I am. I also hope to be a sort of medium to spread awareness for others that need prayers, help, or just someone to walk through life with!

Isabella Kathryn

Usually referred to as Bella. As well as Bells, Bellie, Belly Boo, Bellsie Bubs, Bubs, Bubba, Bells and Whistles.... Bella is our first born daughter. She is 6. Bella enjoys school, reading, riding her training-wheel free bike, she could color and write for hours, she loves singing to the Momma Mia soundtrack, anything princess or pink, having bows in her hair, playing dress up, and her little sisters! God blessed us with Bella a month early but she was perfectly healthy. In six years she has become such a bright, outgoing, sensitive, and fearless little girl. Bella really is the sweetest girl you will ever meet. She is eager to please. If she hurts or disappoints someone it literally crushes her to tears. This last year she asked Jesus to be her Lord and Savior and we could not be more proud!! Love this sweet, blonde, blue eyed beauty!

Bryanna Karina

Usually known as Brynn. As well as Brynnie, Miley, Miley Moo, Geegs, Geegers, Brynnie Boo, and many more. Ten days before Bella turned 2 years old we were blessed with another beautiful, healthy girl by planned c-section. This time I was able to see my baby right after birth, watch her get weighed, bathed, etc. I couldn't wait for Bella to meet her. Brynn is now 4 and keeps me laughing all day long. Brynn, since she was about 2 months old has been the smiliest baby I have ever met. All you need to do is look at her and she will flash you a world class smile. Brynn is smiley, more shy and reserved about things than her big sis, can be quite the clown when she feels safe or gets in a silly mood, amazingly brilliant, she's been speaking full sentences since she was 19 months and continues to amaze us with what comes out of her mouth. She loves doing whatever her big sister is doing, dressing up, looking at books, her blankie, being held, twirling in her dresses, singing, and dancing whenever she hears music! Brynn is my compassionate baby, she hates to see people hurting. We just love this sweet, shy, snuggly, smiling little girl!

Brooklyn Blythe

Also known as Brookie, Brookie Cookie, Cookie Lu, Lulu B just to name a few. Sweet, sweet Brooklyn is our family's latest addition! We welcomed Brookie into our family on August 23rd 2010 at 12:23pm by planned c-section. I was nervous she would be a bit high maintenance since she came out screaming bloody murder and continued to wail anytime anyone touched her- get her footprints, take her temperature, etc. Amazingly, she would instantly stop the moment the Hubs touched her or began talking to her. And since her birthday, we have barely heard a peep out of her..... And fast forward 18 months, she definitely makes plenty of peeps now! :) We are full blown in the the terrible twos (which IMO last from 18-36 months) I believe. To make matters worse she's also cutting her 4 molars. She definitely knows what she wants but can't quite articulate it, so gets frustrated. Eating is also a hit or miss these days which is very foreign to me. Mixed with the crabby days though is the funniest personality ever. She is a riot! She LOVES chasing after her big sisters or having them chase and imitate her. She also has this adorable chubby face and will peek out of the corner of her eyes and just melt your heart! She is definitely shy at first but if you can get through to her she will keep you in stitches with her antics. We love you little BB and couldn't ask for a sweeter addition to our family!

Monday, April 2, 2012

The BIG party!!

And now for the big party!!!
Warning! This is a big post. :)

The girls party was Saturday, March 3rd.
And armed with Google and Pinterest I had a million great ideas at my disposal! :)
All props must go to them!
I got most of my great ideas at this site and this site but also have other fun ideas pinned on Pinterest on the board marked Bella and Brynn's Birthday- you can find my boards under Barclay Domier I guess??? Man, I wish I could have done all the ideas I saw. :)

With the hubs' parents in town and my mom in Thursday afternoon all hands were on deck to get to work on party prep!

This year the girls requested a Rapunzel party at our church. :)

We've used one of our church's rooms the last two years and the girls just love it.

My mom and I literally spent the rest of Thursday and ALL of Friday getting everything ready.

One of the funniest prep projects was a giant, yarn, Rapunzel braid. We literally had it going around our living room, through our kitchen, down through our family room and into the bathroom. Next my mom, MIL and I each took a strand and started to braid. Only thing is, while you start braiding, it immediately does a braid in the opposite direction behind you, agh! Would have been great to go outside so we could have all the room we needed to just each have a strand and just start stepping over and braiding normally but it was raining. :( So I stood at the front braiding, while my MIL undid the opposite braid behind me, and my mom stood in the middle untangling. It was quite the production! It literally took Brooklyn's full 2.5 hr nap. :)

My mom spent most of Friday making this beautiful creation:

We went back and forth about doing cupcakes or maybe a braid cake because this seemed so daunting, but man I am happy mom stepped up to the challenge, and it turned out amazing!!

And it was all edible materials except the white part Rapunzel was in (it was a small tupperware with a hole cut in it-well and the figurines of course were not edible). The roof was made of sticks of strawberry gum. The tower part is Rice Krispies covered in fondont-the flowers are fondont too. The rest is frosting and either strawberry or confetti cake!

On the tables was our lovely braid decorated with flowers, Tangled coloring sheets I printed off the computer, and frying pans (of course) full of crayons.

My mom made these wonderful pictures and we printed them off on large address labels as names tags for the kids. With 32 kids coming it is a must to break them up in to smaller groups to maintain some kind of order. :) Each picture was a different group: we had blonde Rapunzel, Maximus, Pasqual, Flynn and a brunette Rapunzel.

For goody bags, unfortunately, I couldn't be as creative as I wanted. When you have 32 attendees it just becomes way too expensive. Luckily Walmart has these lovely party themed goody bag packs, and of course had Tangled themed ones (got Phineas and Ferb for the boys). So not what I would do if I had all the $ in the world but it worked and of course they were filled with things the kids loved. :)

There are the cutest goody bag ideas on one of the websites I listed above.

Entrance into our party room:

We had the purple sun banners hung every where. We were going to string them across the room and just ran out of time so we just hung them all around the room. Also wanted to do the lantern idea but again just couldn't fit it in.

These are the tables with the crayons and coloring sheets.

We had five different activities for the 5 groups to rotate through.

We had to create activities that took about the same amount of time (5-7 minutes) to do and could be done with a variety of different aged kids (2 to 6yrs).

Here are most of the party goers, listening very well while I explained our five fun stations.

Birthday girls

(and sweet baby Katie, who is not such a baby anymore but the girls still call her that :) )

In room number 1 we had a table full of different sprinkles and sun shaped (like the sun in the movie) cookies with a heaping spoonful of yellow frosting!

(don't mind the tvs they're there for the kids Sunday school classes)

Some had a little bit more sprinkles then they did frosting it looks like! :)

Room number 2 I played pictionary with the groups using Rapunzel's long yellow hair (a piece of yellow yarn). We took the "hair" and turned it into pictures (fish, shapes, crown, house, etc.) and the rest of the group had to guess what it was. They were very creative!

Room number 3 we made a cute Pasqual project using adhesive foam sheets, party blowers (got packs of 8 at the $1 store, just tear off the decorative paper), and wiggly eyes.

Room number 4, since Rapunzel loved painting, we had to paint too!

And room number 5 we had pin the frying pan on Flynn, we all know how much Rapunzel loved to hit Flynn with the frying pan! :)

My mom drew the Flynn wanted poster and we cut frying pans out of the same adhesive foam paper that we used for the Pasqual project, so they were already sticky!

I had the idea of creating a tower to take pictures of the party goers to send with in the thank you notes.

We duct taped two tri-fold construction boards, one on top of the other, and then my mom painted it to look like stone. Each party guest wore our Rapunzel hair or stood at the bottom of the tower with a satchel and Rapunzel crown- gotta do Flynn for the boys! :)

After the stations we played the Mother Gothel game.

You pick one person to be Mother Gothel (we let Bella do it once and Brynn do it once). Mother Gothel closes her eyes and every body else scatters and chooses one of 4 places to "hide." I had four people holding signs with one of the following places: Rapunzel's tower, the lake, the Snugly Duckling, and the Kingdom. So the party goers chose one of the above 4 places to hide. When everyone was in their spot, Mother Gothel would pick one of the 4 places to "look" for everyone. Everyone in the location, that she chose to "look," is out. Then Mother Gothel closes her eyes again and everyone either stays where they are or picks another location. Then Mothel Gothel picks a place to "look" for them again and so on and so on until there is one person left, and they're the winner!

Our first precious little Mother Gothel, waiting for the go ahead.

Out but having fun watching the game!

Somebody kept wanting to peek. :)

And a rare picture of this little one, blurry of course because I don't think she stopped moving the whole party. Thank goodness for Mormor Domier who kept watch over her!