I'll leave to She Who Orchestrates the Parties to provide a full-ish summary of Julia's fourth-birthday festivities, but I have to comment on one wonderful bit of the day...
Probably due mostly to sky-high expectations for the day, Julia's morning was pretty rough. We broke the monotony with a walk down the block to see a huge inflatable bouncy-thing which a neighbor had installed for her daughter's high school (!) graduation.
As we admired it - with absolutely no expectation of actually using it - this neighbor called out to us and said we were welcome to go inside. These were some of the results:
The girls, bouncing around inside.
Julia tackling the slide...
Vivi following suit: yes, the slide was this steep at the top -
but then leveled out nicely.
In short, they LOVED it. And what a nice neighbor, huh? She even assured us that the whole thing was insured.
Not a bad way to kick off a birth day!