BounceU Party: Getting the Party Started

I guess I've through enough large parties since Lilli was born to sort of realize my limits as a full time working momma, so the week before her parties really wasn't all that stressful. I had started working on various thing for a couple of weeks before hand and have gotten a lot better at planning it all out and coming up with a game plan to get everything done without being up until 2 am.

Thursday night before her Saturday party we got the cupcakes made and baked.
That night after she went to bed Brent and I got all the goodie baskets laid out and mostly done. I also hand-made some chocolate lollipops - lobsters and sharks, so the night before the party we bagged those and then wrapped the whole thing in cellophane. Pippin was a great help. And by great help I mean generally in the way, and then on Friday night he destroyed one before we had wrapped it so he could eat some of the candy. And a box of stickers.
Feats of strength!
The goodie baskets turned out SO cute. I bought little sand pails at Party City and filled them with all ocean themed (aka Little Mermaid stuff). I made the chocolate lobster and shark lollipops via candy molds, then put in large Goldfish bags (a steal on Amazon), princess candy and stickers, shark gummies and some little sea horse water guns. They were filled with sand colored crinkle paper and then we wrapped them in cellophane and tied with custom tags I ordered on Etsy. They're by far the fave goodie bags we've ever done, and instead of giving cheap and junky toys I think the "stuff" was a lot better!
We got to BounceU about a half hour early, but they seriously take care of everything for you so we just sort of hung out and waited for friends to arrive. We ended up having 20 kiddos.
She and Finn crack me up. He's her best friend and they are the huggiest little pair.
Emma and Ella arrived.
Lilli loves her Emma! Emma is so good with the littles and she always walks Lilli to Children's Church on Sunday morning and then she'll just grab her on Wednesday night and take her off to class.
We had the framed invitation for her friends to sign. We now have all three hanging up on her wall. It's cute because friends are getting old enough to start writing (or trying to write) their name on their own. This is Zach working on his name.
Then some of the others gathered around to sign. There's Finn, Levi, Madisyn, Lydia Kate, Ella, Lilli and Ashlyn.
After they watched a safety video they all lined up to run into the first jumpy party. Birthday girl got to lead the way!
I'll have to probably break this into several posts because there's just so many kids and pictures!

In other news, we've had a big week at work this week - one of our books is the #1 New York Times Bestseller, unseating a title that's been there for over a YEAR! That's huge, huge, huge! The Vow is a true story that Hollywood turned into a movie - changing a ton of facts and taking the major religious theme out of it. Our book tells the true Christian story and it's only been out for one week and has already topped the charts. A massive accomplishment for our company! The couple has been on all kinds of shows this past week - Inside Edition, Today show and so on and it's all been very exciting and fun to be a part of.

We have a BUSY weekend ahead including two different birthday parties tomorrow! We are the partiest people! But Lilli loves it and it certainly keeps us from getting bored and also from getting this house clean.