Birthday Party Stuff

When it comes to my kid's birthday parties, I try to resist going all Pinterest crazy and making everything themed and putting special labels on water bottles and such. You know why? Your kid does not care if you do that. In the long run, all you've done is make more work for yourself.

For Alana's birthday, which happens to land right in the middle of fall break, I let her have a small party with friends from school. The only real effort I put into this party was cupcakes, not cake because cake = forks & plates. She talked me into cotton candy and rice krispy treats and those things require like 5 minutes of work so I agreed.

I happen to own/hoard many cake stands and things of that nature, because I have an addiction to buying them. I have no intention of ever conquering this addiction because cake stands are a) functional and b) ridiculously cute.

When it comes to entertaining children I am a firm believer that 7/8 year olds can entertain themselves. Alana made herself in charge of games and they all ran around and played Duck Duck Goose and Red light/Green light till I refueled them with the sugar from the cotton candy and rice krispy treats. Then they ran around again till I fed them cupcakes. It worked out okay and I got to sit on my porch and watch them get tired.

And that was Alana's first birthday party. She couldn't possibly have just one. She still had grandparents and other family to feed cake to and receive presents from. So on Saturday I made a giant cake and some breads and a tray of fruit and we went to the park for another party.

In case you didn't know, wearing zebra striped socks with your dress shoes is totally fashionable.

 Ava had a case of little sister birthday envy, so she had to get a crown too. She also had to remind Alana several times of the one toy that she shared with her when it was Ava's birthday and Alana had the birthday envy. ONE TOY.

I made them stand together to compare height and the number of teeth they both have. Last year at this time Alana was the toothless one, now she has giant teeth and Jayden has no front teeth.

I may have an ongoing tradition of using number candles on my kid's birthday cakes. For some reason this year though Walmart had no "8" candles. I don't know if tons of kids in Benson turned 8 in the same time period or what, but I had to go to Target in Sierra Vista to get a candle. And they were out of "7" candles, so apparently they had a bunch of kids turn 7 recently.

I'm glad we got to celebrate Alana's birthday, twice. She is so sweet and loving and I wanted her to feel special since she's the oldest and with little kids around its easy for them to feel left out. All it took for her to feel loved was to be sung to a couple of times, including once at the Olive Garden, where she actually requested they publicly sing to her (who does that?). I hope she always stays this sweet, even if the Olive Garden staff doesn't sing to her every other day of the year.