My girlie turned 6 today.  What?? How?? Even though it feels like my life revolves around her and I have tried my best to take in every little moment, I still don’t understand how I could possibly have a 6 year-old in my life!  I know that this is a universal experience of time flying with your little ones, but I am just floored by it anyway.

We had a big BBQ party for her yesterday and there was a ton of leftovers.  To save time and ensure the leftovers were consumed, I packed the bento lunches as I put away the rest of the food.  I packed the kids in their Easy LunchBoxes and my husband got his Lock & Lock.

Here’s Girlie’s birthday BBQ bento:

She has this amazing pasta salad that my mom made with some cubes of white cheddar cheese.  I added picks to spell out the word SIX for her. I’ll have to do a proper six bento later this week, but this will have to do for now.  She was so exited to have a lunch made of “party food” as it was!  She has a fruit salad of pineapple, grapes, and strawberries and some veggies with low-fat ranch in a mini-dipper container.  This will be a healthy and filling lunch for her.

Little Dude’s lunch is similar. He has pasta salad, cheese and crackers, fruit salad, and 2 small slices of tomato pie.  I added some animal fork picks to give him a smile.

My husband got one compartment of the leftover burger toppings and a hamburger.  I threw some extra cauliflower in there too.  The other compartment has pasta salad, fruit salad, veggies, and ranch dip in a small heart container marked “XOXO.”

I was traveling the whole week prior to her party and did not have a lot of time to put together a big bash for her.  We decided on a simple BBQ, but it grew and grew until we ended up with around 50 guests!  Our plan was to have a Pinterest party and attempt some of the pins from our Birthday Parties board, but a lot of those got lost in the chaos of 17 kids running around like crazy!  The kids mostly played in the bounce house, beat up on the piñata, and did some arts and crafts I set out for them (painting and decorating building blocks and foam bookmarks).  The crafts were actually a huge hit and the kids were very creative with their projects.  I was impressed!

Some of the pins I had planned on never even got started.  I wanted to make these ice cream hearts and a star walkway to our backyard party.  I also wanted to do this simple trick with the water bottles.  I just did not have time leading up to or during the party.

We did try to explode watermelons, but all the big ones were gone and it didn’t seem like it was going to work on the tiny ones we found, so we abandoned that too.  I think the only pin we successfully re-created was the terra-cotta-pot-s’mores.  Here is a picture of Girlie with the man she has identified has “the love of her life” making s’mores together:

She is absolutely certain that she is going to marry him when they’re older! Here is my Little Dude going wild on the piñata:

All the kids had fun with that and the scramble for candy was intense!  Finally, here is a picture of my beautiful girlie basking in the glow of the Happy Birthday song:

Aaaaaah! I love how much she grows and changes, but I get very sentimental at birthday time.  I just could not keep my cool when I tucked her in last night, knowing she’d never be 5 again.  Of course, she hugged me and told me not to be sad and that she will always be my baby no matter how old she gets.  And she will.  But not like this.  Not like she is right now.  Sigh.  Oh well, I did sign up for this roller coaster!

She was so gracious at her party and tried to look after her guests and her little brother to make sure everyone was having fun. She loved opening all of her presents and even though we did so privately, she still oooohed and aaahed and exclaimed over each one and made sure take time to appreciate it all.  We take a picture of her with each present to include in thank you notes.  It adds a personal touch and we know the kids like to see their friend enjoying the present.

Girlie also loves passing out goodie bags at parties and this year was no exception.  The only change was that I picked up favors at Daiso Japan while I was in San Francisco last week.  I bought this huge stash of bento supplies and put together bento boxes for each kid:

I did not get a picture of the individual favor boxes, but they each had a yellow or pink 2-tier bento box, a cookie cutter, a fork and spoon set, and 2 bento picks.  I tied them with ribbon and attached a paper that explained our love of Pinterest and my profile name if they wanted to follow me or see more bento ideas.  The kids seemed pretty excited.  I hope they like them!  It was not a toy like they probably expected, but hopefully this will get used or at least not be stepped on by a parent at 2am.

And as soon as our guests were out the door and gifts were opened, I got right back to work on making the Madagascar 3 Afro Polka Dot Circus Cupcakes my girlie specifically requested for her school birthday treat!  We usually do rice krispy treats, but this  was what she really wanted.  The look of the kids faces when they saw them was priceless, they were laughing as they remembered Marty’s song and dance from the most recent movie. Thanks again to BentOnBetterLunches for that great idea!  These are easy to make and consistently come out great!

Do you go nuts over parties like I do?  This was a “small and low-key” party for me and it was still a ton of people and a lot of work.  Girlie actually asked me for something for her birthday gift and I said “NO! This party is your gift!”  She accepted it pretty easily, which helped my cause.  I’d love to say that next year’s party will be smaller, but I know me and I can’t help myself.  If you have any advice on managing this issue, please send me your suggestion! I need help!

I used these products in today’s lunch: