Celebrate: Dakota Turns 7! And Starts 2nd Grade!

As usual, Dakota's birthday and the start of school coincided - which is crazy to me because my nephew just started yesterday and we are already in week 5.  Hard to believe.  Dakota was really excited about school starting, in fact, she actually missed it all summer.  She absolutely loves school and I am thankful for her eagerness to learn.  She was a little nervous on the first day because she has a man teacher this year and I guess that seemed a little unorthodox to her.  When I picked her up she said, "He is so sweet!" and has really enjoyed him so far.  She also got accepted into the gifted program and will have a few days a week where she participates in an alternate class that will hopefully challenge her a little more.

 I'm pretty sure I was half this height in 2nd grade.

 First year with short hair - she got gum stuck in it and thought she could cut it without me knowing.  She cut out a HUGE chunk and I could have easily gotten the gum out if she would have told me.  So this was the fix.  It is definitely easier but I think it makes her look older...sniff.

Look how much she has grown up since last year's first day!

Dakota really is such an amazing girl.  I get frustrated over the normal attitudes that come with raising a little girl but other than those expected annoyances - she is such a big help and blessing to us.  I really am so proud of her and who she is growing to be.  

This year Dakota fell in love with Legos - especially Lego Friends.  She got a few sets for Christmas and has since become fully obsessed.  In fact, she currently says she wants to be a "Lego Maker" when she grows up.  I tried to explain that's kind of what I do only with real buildings but I think she meant she wants to get paid to play with them all day.  She can be entertained for hours with her sets, following every single little direction and if she messes up, she will start over.  All of that Lego love lead to an obvious theme for her bday.  We decide to invite a few of her closest girlfriends for a small, at-home dinner and play time. They ate, built a few Lego sets (although I don't think her friends are into them as much as she is), had their nails painted, watched a Lego Friends cartoon and just did whatever little girls do best, which involved a lot of squealing.  I don't think I'm going to be ready for a slumber party for a while...

 Lego offers lots of free downloads which is awesome so I took one of the printable invites and added all of my own text in Photoshop.  I also printed some of the mazes and coloring pages for the girls to do at the party.

 We've already established that I am not a great cake decorator so I went simple here; although I still about had a catastrophe trying to get the 7 to stand up after it fell off of it's base which was already embedded in the cake.

Little ponytail holder "lollipops" for favors.  The girls also got a small Lego set.

  We quickly constructed something to hold forks but the rest of the island was covered with her big Lego Friend sets as decorations.  Her smaller sets we put on the table for the girls to build.

The girls took over the dining room table and it was so cute.  Dakota requested:  chicken nuggets, macaroni & cheese, strawberries, blueberries, green beans and rolls.

I love these two girls.