Sunday, September 15, 2013

The Birthday Girls

I finally turned the age I will be for the rest of my life!  I had a nice, relaxing 29th birthday and celebrated with cake and ice cream in the front yard with all the neighbors.  (Just hanging out with all the neighbors in the evenings is the best thing about summer!) One of my amazing neighbors made this awesome cake for Cassie and me.

We celebrated with a family dinner at my parents' house the next night.  Right now, I think Cassie likes that our birthdays are so close (June 1st and June 5th), but we'll see if she ever gets a little more diva in her. ;)

Opening Presents


This is payback for my little brother stealing my phone when I wasn't looking and taking ridiculous pictures.  I have to keep my eye on my phone when Bubba is around, or I end up with shirtless Taylor Lautner as my wallpaper and fart sounds apps...

Just hangin' out on the back steps and eating some after-party yogurt.  Cassie's favorite birthday gift was the goggles from Uncle Vaughn.  Obviously.

I threw Cassie her first real birthday party this year!  I felt kind of guilty that she had never had a friend birthday party before (and especially guilty that I was gone for most of her birthday last year because I was attending my uncle's funeral), so when Cassie's list of friends that she wanted to invite numbered in the twenties, I decided to suck it up and make it happen!  We played water games in the back yard with about 26 kids, and luckily I had several moms who stayed to help out!

Playing duck, duck, goose while we wait for all the party quests to arrive

Water relay race

Singing to the new 5-year-old

I love this one of Cassie!  She was so excited about the cupcakes with My Little Pony toppers!

Opening gifts- she got spoiled.  I guess you can expect a lot of presents when you invite that many friends....

The pinata was a big hit! (heh, heh)

The preparation for the party was quite a bit of work (I stayed up until midnight frosting cupcakes), but I have to say that the aftermath was way worse.  It got windy right as everyone was leaving the party, so I had to quickly get everything inside- presents, wrapping paper, gift bags, tissue paper, pinata pieces, decorations (I didn't even get a picture of them!  But they were cute, I promise.), towels, garbage can, paper plates, napkins, folding table, cupcake stands...you get the idea.  I just dumped everything inside and we drove to pick up Trevor from work (he had to work late that night) and went to a restaurant for Cassie's birthday dinner.  By the time we dropped Trevor back at work and I got home with the kids, it took all my energy just to put them to bed.  (Let's be honest.  At that point in my pregnancy [about 4 months along], I was totally exhausted every night after putting the kids to bed!)  So...absolutely no cleaning got done that night, or the next day, or the next day.  Seriously, that party had me wiped out for a full 48 hours afterwards!  I am proud to say that I did finally clean everything up.  And since my guilt is now gone, next year's birthday will be much lower key. :)

2 comments:

Marie said...

Looks like fun! My friend Annie does a big birthday party every 4 years so they still get a party like they want, but she doesn't wear herself out multiple times per year.

Shelly said...

Impressive!! Throwing parties are a lot of work, but it looks like it was a blast.

My older girls get every other year (on the off year a special playdate with one friend), twins took cupcakes Nicole made to preschool last year, so I owe them something this year... 4 days after I'm due.

Derek left a similar photo (with Brooklyn) on my phone, they must be related!

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