Makenna’s Sixth Birthday Party

The weekend after Myles’ birthday party, we had Makenna’s sixth birthday party (Saturday, March 22nd). Makenna is ALL about the birthday parties. Seriously, I’m pretty sure she would rather skip presents and have a big party with friends any day of the week! This year we let her have a little bigger party than we might usually would because the year before she didn’t get to have a party because she got a new baby brother instead. : ) So this year, when she asked to be able to invite ALL her friends to her party I agreed.

I knew the only way we could afford to let her invite all her friends was to have an at-home party. However, with so many kids (I think she ended up with 37 because she invited her entire kindergarten class plus all her friends from Church) in our house there wasn’t a whole lot of options for a party. So we decided to do a Frozen movie party! (How is it possible I don’t have a picture of her actual invitations? Oh well, guess a screenshot from the computer will have to do!)

We had all the kids dress up in their pajamas and pretended it was a sleepover—only all the kids went home before the night was over! : D We chose Frozen as our theme because that is Makenna’s current favorite movie (that was also why we had to wait until the end of March to have the party—we had to wait for the movie to come out on DVD!).

For the decorations I went to Target, Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Sam’s Club, the Disney Store, Toys R Us, and Party City—EVERYWHERE was sold out of Frozen things! So I ended up having to make everything. You would think I would have learned to not put things off after staying up all night the weekend before for Myles’ party—nope, still didn’t get started until the day before her party and so didn’t get everything done that I wanted to. Oh well, right!

I ended up making 3D snowflakes and hanging them from purple, blue, and green paper chains from the ceiling of our livingroom.

Then we took all the furniture out of our livingroom and spread purple table cloths down to protect the floor. All the kids sat on the livingroom floor to both watch the movie and to eat. This was the only way we could fit everyone in! : )

We had the dining room set up for food and presents. I decorated with a simple purple/green/blue circle garland and a Happy Birthday banner.

Her cake was our main centerpiece on the table:

And then on the sides I made paper Elsa and Anna dolls.

We also had a table set up with presents on one side:

And hats on the other. We did crowns for the girls and reindeer antlers for the boys.

When the guests arrived they got to put on their hat and then go take a picture by the Olaf I made.

We had one little guest arrive over a hour early so I didn’t get a picture of the birthday girl by her Olaf! Not sure how I managed to miss that one…  : (

It was pretty crazy there for a while. We had all the kids arriving and I was trying to tell them where to put their shoes and their coats and trying to get hats on everyone and get their pictures made… but eventually we had everyone all set and watched the movie.

The movie was fun. Some of the kids had never seen it before and were really excited to see what it was all about. Of course it was hard to keep everyone quiet enough to let everyone else hear, but I didn’t teach elementary school for nothing, right? : D

During the middle of the party Austin came with pizza and we passed it out and they ate and had juice and it broke up the restlessness of the few kids a bit.

Myles was an angel child and sat in his highchair watching the movie and the kids the ENTIRE party! I was crazy impressed!

After everyone had finished eating we paused the movie to sing Happy Birthday and let the birthday girl blow out her candles.

Then for the rest of the movie the kids munched on cake and ice cream.

After the movie was over we spent the last 30 minutes letting Makenna open her presents. You don’t think about it when you invite so many kids to a party, but she had SO MANY PRESENTS to open! It was actually pretty ridiculous and the kids all got tired watching her after a little while. I told them they didn’t have to watch but they had to stay in the livingroom with their bottoms on the floor. That worked well so some could watch her if they wanted and the rest could sit in groups and socialize with each other. I won’t post pictures of her opening presents because honestly she just got so much stuff. She was truly one spoiled little girl!

After presents we turned on the Frozen soundtrack and let all the kids run around and sing and dance and be crazy. I think they liked that the best.

After all the parents arrived to pick up their kids, Makenna sent them home with a Frozen popsicle (just an Otter pop) to thank them for coming (getting the favors all cute was one of those things I ran out of time to do!).

It was a very easy party, but Makenna said she had the best birthday ever! Hey, as long as she is happy we are happy! We are glad she had such a good time!

Myles First Birthday Party

On March 15th we had Myles’ first birthday party. We have had a ton of babies born into our ward in the last year, so we wanted to have a “baby party” and invite all the ward babies for a birthday brunch. I planned the party to be very low key—just brunch and that is basically it—but I was sick all week long and didn’t get to work on party things until the night before. So on Friday night we took Makenna to dance and then we all went to a carnival at Makenna’s school and then I ended up having to stay up all night making decorations and cooking and on Saturday I went to the church at like 5:30 AM to decorate and prepare for the 9:30 AM party (we had the party at the church in order to accommodate so many people). It was CRAZY!

Since we are so obsessed with our little baby, we decided the theme for his party would be “You Are My Sunshine.” It was my first time to really make invitations, but I think they came out cute!

Our color scheme was yellow and blue and I made a lot of sunshines to decorate.

On one wall I had a picture of him from each of his “month birthdays” on little sunshines.

On the other wall I made a birthday banner and used paper chains and a giant sunshine with his one year birthday picture to decorate.

His cake was our main centerpiece on the food table.

For the food we had individual bags of cereal:

I got too busy and didn’t get pictures of the other food, but we had bacon and spinach quiche, a yogurt and oatmeal bar with all the toppings, toast and bagels with all the toppings, and several kinds of muffins. Then we had milk and juices and water for the drinks.

For the individual tables I made little fan type centerpieces:

I had coloring pages on the tables for the kids to work on as they arrived to the party.

And then for the take home favors I had yellow and orange candies for each family:

We don’t have a color printer so I had to color everything by hand—that is what took so long, haha.

Different views of the room (Austin put out the chairs after he and the kids arrived at about 9 so I don’t have a picture of the room completely completed):

The party went as planned and was basically stress free after it got started. We had breakfast and then everyone sang Happy Birthday to Myles.

Then we had cake. We didn’t do a messy cake with Myles this time because he did one on his actual birthday. Instead I fed him so we didn’t make a mess at the church. : )

Afterwards he opened his presents.

And then we opened up the rest of the gym and let all the kids run (or crawl!) around and play.

I think it turned out to be a fun little party. After my initial stress of decorating (and lack of sleep) was over the party went very smoothly. We ate and socialized with the other baby families and had a good time celebrating our sweet baby Myles.

More Winter Fun

 

On March 8, Austin got us tickets to see Mr. Peabody and Sherman at a local theater through a nurse at his work. It was really fun because they had the entire theater rented out and we got free popcorn and soda and balloons and everything.

The movie was cute (what I got to see was cute at least—I spent probably half the movie in the lobby with Myles) and the kids had a great time. There was also a raffle and both the big kids won new books!

Afterwards we went to the library and Olaf was there. Pretty exciting! : D

We took Makenna and Myles to get their pictures made for their birthdays and the photographer took pictures of the two of them together as well as their individual shots. We didn’t buy any of them (hello, I have three kids! Why would I buy pictures of just two of them?) but they were too cute! : )

Makenna has now lost two teeth! She came home from school one day with one of her bottom teeth just barely hanging—she had hit her mouth on the table in Science Class and it made her tooth lose. Well she came home from school and I knew I needed to pull it before it fell out in her mouth and she swallowed it! So I gave a little tug and it came out. She screamed; I screamed; it was crazy! Haha. Since then she has lost another one on the bottom and just feels so grown up!

Grandma Becky sent presents for Myles for his birthday. He loved the presents but we couldn’t get him to take a picture!

Haha, oh that boy! Makenna, on the other hand, was only happy to take a picture with her new Grandma Becky presents!

Max missed out on birthday week because, obviously, his birthday is in June. But when Grandma sent birthday presents, she sent him a few things as well. He was super excited about it. : )

On March 14 we went to a carnival at Makenna’s school. Makenna had dance first so we didn’t get there until late and didn’t get to do quite as much as the kids would have liked, but it was still a fun time.

We got a cat! We are SO not pet people, but after all the snow melted we had mice start to come inside. I CANNOT HANDLE mice, so the very next day we went to the shelter and bought a cat!

She is a calico cat and looks like she has streaks of fire running on her fur so we named her Katniss (like Katniss, “The Girl On Fire” from Hunger Games). She has been great with the kids. They love her and she tolerates them, but it is working out so far (and no more mice!)! We have been impressed that even when they pull on her or Myles pokes her she just waits until she can get away safely and runs away—she hasn’t attempted to bite or scratch or anything. It is still a big adjustment because she wakes us up at night crying because we are sleeping and she is awake, but she has definitely become a member of our family already!

Myles finally got his first haircut! His hair was getting so long and hanging over his ears and onto his shoulders so it had to be done! Austin said he would cut it so I held him and Dad buzzed away!

When the cut was over we were shocked at how much a difference it had made! All of a sudden we went from a brunette baby to a blond toddler! He totally looked like a different child!

It was a crazy adjustment at first and I didn’t like it because it was so short, but it has grown on us and he is such a cutie!

Myles wasn’t the only person to get a haircut—Makenna also got seven inches cut off her hair!

She and I went to the salon together and both came home with short new dos!

On March 18th Max and I went to school for his kindergarten registration. He is so excited to be starting school in the Fall!

One last picture—I took Makenna to the bus stop one morning and came back to hear Max yelling for help. His brother decided to use his face as a step stool…

That basically sums up our crazy days around here! ; )