Mermaids, Birthdays, and A.R.

We've had a busy, busy few days!!

Yesterday, we had birthday party to go to...it was Little Mermaid themed.






We LOVE The Little Mermaid!!

It was my FAVorite growing up.

eh...who am I kidding? It's STILL my fave...lol. I can sing all the songs, and say all the words.

This girl is a swimmin' fool!!

Doesn't matter what the body of water is  - beach, pool, bathtub, puddle...lol.

She's a happy girl in the water....just like her mama!

The birthday host gave goggles to everyone who came as a "thank you" gift...

A LOVED them...lol

She wore them for the rest of the day...



hahahaha!!!

Sorry, I just HAD to show you....

but that brings me to a question I've had for a while.

Why has it become customary that we, as birthday party hosts, have to give out "thank you" gifts to the guests?
I mean, we spend all this money on the food, decorations, possibly a rental of some sort, and all kinds of other things - I just don't get it.
Don't we give out thank you cards??
Can someone let me in on this secret? I mean, for our thank you gifts, it's usually a craft that the kids do while they are at our parties...I mean, that's good, right??

Anyway, back on track....

Then we went up to St. Augustine for a bit - remember??

I went to Flagler College up there....BEAUTIFUL college.

I still have friends up there...

One of my friends was having a birthday party.

So we went, but we also visited some other friends...

We had lunch at the place I worked while going to school up there -


And A got to play with some of her friends...ok, a LOT of her friends...and swim in the pool - AGAIN..

Check out my "totally 80s" girl...hehe




~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Squirrel~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Last Monday, Tara posted her Made it Monday craft she did...and they were birthday tags, owl themed.
So SUPER cute!!
But I'm not doing an Owl theme...

I'm doing the beach theme...
So I decided to make my own :)

Like the circles??? I got all techy with my hub's Corel Draw program...I feel all special now..lol

And here are the surfboard tags.

What do you do with them??

Well, you can attach them to whatever you get for the kids, but I was going to hole punch each end of the surfboard and then "thread" a silly straw or pencil through both holes...and you can do the same with the circles.

You can get them from my TpT for free :)

AND

I FINALLY got around to making my pirate A.R. theme pack into a beach/surfing theme :)

I absolutely LOVE it!!!

There are surfer bookmarks with A.R. levels, genre and series graphs, reading logs and A.R. quiz logs, bulletin board pieces so they can "surf" to each island as they grow in A.R. points, monthly goal sheets and a certificate if/when they reach that month's goal, a poster for skill focus during reading (with suggestions), and a letter to the parents.

If you would like a different theme, I am open to suggestions!!
Also, I know some of you do reading counts, and I was trying to make this fit for that as well, but I don't know enough. If you are someone who wants this set made for Reading Counts, please let me know and we can work it out!

And I leave you with THIS smile...



I mean, seriously....how can that NOT make you smile?!?!