North Shore Oahu Family Photoshoot

For our 5 year anniversary, instead of swapping gifts we splurged on a family session with Emily Turner during our trip to Hawaii. We booked the session for the late afternoon to take advantage of the "golden hour", it also gave us all morning to wander and explore Waikiki. The drive from Waikiki to North Shore was just under an hour and along the way we passed the Dole plantation with it's unending fields of pineapples as well as some fruit stands with their beautiful display of whole and cut up fruit. The contrast between the busy city streets of Waikiki and the quiet roads of North Shore are stark and I loved it. Our favorite game to play while driving was spot the chicken. There were so many wild chicken aka Hey Hey's roaming around! I did my hair and make up at the hotel but we all changed into our photo shoot outfits in the car on the side of the road which was an adventure in itself. 

Emily is such a gifted photographer and she made us feel at ease while we trekked through the forest and along Turtle Bay on Oahu's North Shore. We love her photography style and the way she captured our interactions. She encouraged us to act normally and to engage and explore our surroundings. That wasn't hard to do as we found ourselves immersed in a forest of hanging vines and old banyan trees as soon as we took the path down from the road. By the water, there were interesting rock formations, groves of coconut trees and Parker's favorite, crabs!

Booking a photography session while on a trip is something I highly recommend if you can swing it. You'll always have lovely photos to look back on and we ended up using these photos for our 2017 holiday cards as well. Thank you, Emily, for capturing these moments for us. They are some of the few photos we took the entire trip because we were consciously trying to live in the moment and not be on our phones. Going through all the photos again makes me want to go back to Hawaii!

On Tuan

Ezekiel Macaw Shirt

J Crew Chinos

Rainbow Sandals

On Mary

ASOS Lace Cold Shoulder Dress

J Crew Sandals

On Parker

Splendid V Neck Tee

Old Navy Chinos

Tevas Sandals

Polyvore outfit board

[Fun fact: they filmed parts of Pirates of the Caribbean and Jumanji in this forest.]

[You can't even tell we got ready in the rental car on the side of the road.]

[This was the photo we used for our Christmas cards.]

[This so perfectly captures us! HAHA]

[Oh hey! I stepped into a postcard.]

LEGO Ninjago Themed 5th Birthday Party

For Parker's 5th birthday we did a full venue buyout of PlayWerx and transformed the space into Parker's Mojo Dojo! The birthday boy had a blast running, climbing and playing with all his friends. I won't lie, this party was a lot of work and required many hours of watching Ninjago and Pinterest browsing but seeing how happy P was made it all worth it. Living in the moment and getting caught up in conversations with friends and family was awesome but it resulted in us barely taking any photos of the party.  Note to self: next time hire a photographer. Leave me a comment if you have any questions about the party! I've also linked all my party resources at the end of this post.  

My sister Tania created a series of custom signs for the party. It pays to have talented sibs! We created a custom minifig of Parker on the LEGO site and she worked her magic to make it look like he was transforming into a ninja.

[Happy birthday, Parker!]

PlayWerx has two smaller party rooms and we posted the sign below as a call to action for the kids to use their creativity and build. We ordered bricks in bulk from eBay and combined them with bricks from Parker's stash to have enough for the party.

If your kid is anything like mine and watches waaaaaay too many videos on YouTube, you know that sour candy challenges are the cool thing to do. I put together a serpentine (because Ninjago) sour candy challenge in the 2nd small party room that consisted of Smoke Bombs, Warheads, sour snakes, and Toxic Waste. I bought green bowls from Party City and displayed them to look like the Great Devourer. Watching all the kids pucker up from the sour candy was so funny! 

Wouldn't it be cool if I had some photos of the "Tea House" we set up for the party? Oh well. You will just have to read about it. To recreate Sensei Wu's tea house, I ordered 5 gallons of assorted teas from GuilTea Cravings, a local boba tea shop. Ordering by the gallon is not something they currently offer but I asked nicely and the owner Hue was kind enough to work with me. The tea station was a BIG hit and there was not a drop left by the end of the party. 

Parker was very involved with planning the party but the one thing we were able to surprise him with was a face painter. We found Krys on Yelp and she was great to work with. Her work was very detailed and she had an efficient way of keeping track of the kids so they didn't have to wait in a big line to get painted. Check out how detailed Parker's Lloyd is! 

The kids were relatively self-contained in the play structure for most of the party but we did get them all out for cake cutting. Parker is not a big fan cake so we ordered a two-tiered ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins. We made the little minifig candle holders and threw on some fondant ninja stars and Parker's name to make it look more Ninjago. Not my best work but it's not too shabby. We made the cake decorations the morning of the party and my little sister kept saying she is an expert because she's been watching British Bake Off.  

Thank you to my husband for supporting and helping me execute all my crazy ideas. Thank you to our family and friends that helped with crafting and set up. Thank you to the staff at PlayWerx for helping me run a seamless event. It takes a village every time we throw a birthday party which is why we only do it every other year. Hopefully when he turns 7, the theme will be "a trip to Cabo". Want to see photos of past parties? Colorful first birthday. Wild Kratt's 3rd Birthday. 

** I AM NOT PREGNANT** but I have to share this little story from the party. We ordered custom fortune cookies with messages that said "Thank you for coming to my party, Ninja!" and a couple of other messages along the same lines. Well it turns out the fortune cookie company mixed up some of the cookies from our order with someone else's birth announcement cookies. I was driving home from the party when I started getting "Congrats!" texts messages from friends. I was like congrats for what? A good party? You're welcome! Our friends sent us pics of the message below and I just about died. This is literally the most terrible and yet hilarious thing that could have happened. What a way to end the night. 

Venue: PlayWerx

Invitations: Party People Designs

Catering: QT Pot, Bale French Sandwiches & my mother-in-law

Cake: Baskin Robbins

Birthday shirt: KynzKlothes

Face Painter: Krys Kreations Face Painting & Parties

Boba Tea: GuilTea Cravings

Decor: Oriental Trading & Krafts by Kaleigh

Signs: custom designed by Tania

Favors: Fancy Fortune Cookies

Inspo: Pinterest

Happy 5th Birthday, Parker!

Dear Parker,

I remember the day you were born. We had been prepared for your arrival for months and were so excited to finally meeting you.  Dad and I snapped this photo together on the drive to the hospital. It's the last photo we took before you changed our lives forever.

[Look at our faces. We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into.] 

Being your mom has brought me more joy than you could ever imagine. Nothing makes me happier than to see you develop into the sassy, funny and cool kid that you are. Your random compliments turn me to mush, your jokes are fire and the love you unabashedly show everyone you meet gives me hope for the future.  You are my fave, Kid. Happy 5th birthday! Your Ninjago party is going to be so lit.

Love,
Mom