Just keep swimming

This year we decided to do something a little different. We had a big birthday party for Finn and Ally. Finn's birthday is July 23rd and Ally's is September 1st, so we met in the middle on August 16th. Looking back, I think it worked out great! We rented out a pool in Denton, ordered pizza and the kids swam for 2 hours.

Since the party was for a boy and a girl, Star Wars or Shopkins didn't really work out. It didn't take long to agree upon a party theme since we had just watched Finding Dory at the movies not that long ago. What a FUN theme for the pool! I made these invites in Picasa {which I need to retire since it is no longer being supported, boo} and printed them at Costco on photo paper.

I ordered a cake from a friend of ours {Katrina Campbell} and it turned out super cute!! The inside was blue as well, everyone loved it! And my mom and I made some sweets {cupcakes, Finding Dory marshmallow treats} to add to the selection.

I think all of the pictures I am posting is all I took that evening. One cute thing I saw on Pinterest that I did was a bowl full of Goldfish {I bought the Finding Dory Goldfish at Target} and used a mesh fish scooper to get them out. I thought it was cute!

Here are a few of our friends that celebrated with us. It was so nice to have that big pool to ourselves. The big kids had racing competitions {thank you Olympics}, the little ones had a splash area and there were slides and obstacles as well.

Small clip of the Olympic Swimming Races.

Ok, I am a sucker for party favors. I honestly love putting them together and I think our little guests love going home with a small treasure. I found some fun Finding Dory items at Dollar Tree and Target {$1} and then made some little tags and taped them on with themed tape {thank you again Dollar Tree!}. I also made the toppers for the cupcakes. I used bright colored plastic straws as the sticks and it worked out great and the colors were a match too.

I spoke to the kids about having so much and they agreed. We are so blessed. So while I was making the invitations I asked them about presents and what they thought about asking our guests to bring school supplies instead of a present, and we could donate those items to kids who really needed them! Finn and Ally agreed, so we included this card below in each invite.

Our guests brought TONS and TONS of school supplies. It blessed my heart so much. While sorting through the supplies, I took a small inventory of a few items:

Boxes of Crayons: 27

Glue {bottles & sticks}: 56

Spirals: 68

Scissors: 15

Pencils: 316

Packs of Map Pencils: 14

And that is only a portion of what was donated. We had boxes of tissue, binders, packs of paper, antibacterial wipes, etc. Here is the back of my Suburban after sorting it all. Everything was to be donated, except the blue cart folded up in the bottom right-hand corner.

Yesterday we drove into Denton and donated all of the school supplies. Vision Ministries was very thankful for the donation and we hope it blesses other families.