yellow label: More Birthday Parties

Back to the birthday parties.

This was the first year that we had a ‘friends only’ party for Cutter, and it was in part because the birthday boy asked repeatedly, and as his mother, I acquiesced. We kept it small and invited the boys in his class from school. February birthdays do not lend well to large, outdoor celebrations. Indoor fun is limited at best but we managed to make it work.

He fulfilled his role of director quite well, laying out the agenda and decorations for me as if he had been planning it for months (I’m sure he had been). He wanted to have his friends over in their pajamas, eat popcorn, and watch a movie in a tent. It was quite a harmless, and easy request to fulfill I assure you. The big five year old. One whole hand.

The food was camping themed served in skillets and tins to pretend as if we were camping. Cutter was most thrilled by the skillet of gummy worms and Swedish fish, because, well he was a boy turning five and sugar.

I made s’mores cupcakes for the birthday celebration and made goodie bags with brown paper bags that I drew camping signs onto and stuffed with s’more kits and a compass on a carabineer. The simple pleasures of being five, he thought these were the most amazing things ever, and both he and Scout requested their own bag – that they then carried around for the next week. They sure do know how to make a momma’s heart swell.

Steve made a simple a-frame tent on the morning of the party. Yes, he made it seem that simple. While I was busy having anxiety attacks that our house was not cleaned and my husband was assembling a tent in the middle of our living room replete with saw dust and drill bits, he blithely and calmly set to work a mere half an hour before he was to take his daughter to dance class. We’re polar opposites in the demeanor department. Of course he finished in plenty of time and even vacuumed the mess, because that’s his MO.

We were gifted the campfire set from Land of Nod for Christmas and it was a great compliment to the makeshift camp site in the living room. We used some lanterns and other camping gear in the tent to make it more official. And I couldn't resist adorning the tent with a garland or two.

Cutter gushed about the party for days afterwards which is clue number one that he enjoyed himself immensely.

His actual birthday followed that week and we spent a morning together discovering the Lego store (in his words 'an entire store of JUST Legos!') followed by a celebratory lunch at Chick fil A. My day was made right there.

That next weekend we hosted a joint family celebration for both Cutter & Scout and threw the gender reveal in there too. If you’re going to do it, go all out, right? The princess of the party was quite enamored with the fact that everyone was coming to celebrate her (and her brother).

All of the family and friends' kids that we hosted, but really they're all family.

We didn’t do cake on their birthdays so this was the big cake day. Requests from each child were fulfilled, and the cakes were the hit of the day (aside from the news of said baby brother). I believe Scout stood in front of her cake admiring Rapunzel for most of the morning.