birthday part(ies)

sunday was a whirlwind of birthday festivities! matt and i got up and got to work. first was to check the weather which was not looking like it was going to cooperate with our outdoor birthday plans. it looked like the storm might happen before the party and then clear up for the rest of the day - whew!

matt got to setting up the 'water park' (so named by neighbors) in the back yard and i was trying to begin and finish food prep and clean up after breakfast. the good part about the downpour before the party was that it filled up the pools most of the way.

when guests started arriving i was still prep-ing, the vacuum cleaner was out, mason was just wearing a diaper, and matt was out back trying to get everything set up now that the rain had cleared out. i called him up to start up the grill so everyone could start eating. once the food was served people started moving downstairs and the kids made their way out to the yard.

i am not even really sure how long everyone was playing outside before i realized that we had less than an hour left in the party and we still had a game and cake to get through! i had originally thought that three hours might be too long for the party with all the little ones, but it flew by!

our game was a flip flop match. i let all the kids pick a flip flop and matt took the other half of their pair up to the deck. he tossed them all down into the yard and the kids had to hunt for their shoe's mate. it worked out even better than i hoped it would. and the kids were actually excited about the flip flops - which they got to take home as part of their party favor.

i did finally get mason into some shorts so that he didn't spend his whole party in just a diaper but he never made it out to the pool - not that he minded. he really seemed to love having so many people in the house to watch and play with. i did feel kind of bad that the birthday boy never came out to join the party and didn't get even close to the cake. thank you to kurt and jill who watched him inside and carried him outside for cake.

here is a slide show of pictures from the party. a huge thank you to amy and jill for taking pictures because i was hardly getting any!

everyone left by 1:11pm and mason went straight down for his nap. madelyn fought off a nap but then fell asleep on the couch. and it was a good thing too because we had another birthday party to go to at 4:30! madelyn and mason were still asleep at 4:15 so we started to wake them up and get them dressed to go to the party.

it is much more relaxing to attend a party than to host! our friend, colton, turned two and we were very glad that our parties didn't conflict and that all our friends/guests were able to nap between the parties. here are some pictures from colton's party. love.