Birthdays

Well - as I've mentioned several times, January was very busy for me! One of those busy moments involved birthdays. More specifically, three birthdays - though really only two were a worry for me. Our traditional family party for Grandpa, Beth and Peter was hosted by Grandma this year (thank you, thank you... one less cake to worry about, one less project to worry about)!!!!!!!

Originally we were going to have our two parties separate (the friend parties) which is pretty normal - and with Beth turning 8, well, that's pretty special around here and I didn't want her to feel slighted. So I never mentioned anything different. About a week into January Beth and Peter told me they'd changed their minds about two separate parties and decided to have one combined party instead! That was a huge blessing - one cake to share - really it was cupcakes - one party to plan and execute! It was really nice.


We made a lego man pinata - okay - so he had no arms and legs - but it worked and that's what matter - seeing that the theme was legos. This was accomplished by piecing together a couple of those "slipper" gift boxes from Christmas time, each filled with candy - and then also filling two paper bowls, that were then taped together. Then the different parts were wrapped in tissue paper. The head was attached to the body with wood skewers - then a couple of skewers out each side wrapped with a rubber band, and yarn attached - which didn't slide past the rubber bands - so it could be hung up.

They also spent time making lego creations - and then after the party was over, the girls' legos and the boys' legos were separated again - this is really only an issue because they have (of course) separate rooms and Peter didn't like having to ask the girls when he wanted to play legos - which is where the legos were originally kept. So now we have two buckets - the boys and the girls. I'm sure lego pieces get mixed as they float around the house, but they can at least have legos easily accessible - of course, the boys are learning the lessons of playing with legos - that the scatter easily (even on their carpet) and are still required to be picked completely up before bedtime.



Anyway - I was supposed to make a lego man cake - but they decided on cupcakes from this train cupcake set that I've had since Jeremy was littler. They didn't even want to worry about making it look lego-ish. I did have some extra cake batter, so I made a couple of small cakes and cut and pieced the to form a lego man (more or less)... though my frosting (in my hurry) was a bit on the runny side. Still, they were happy to see it.

I hadn't checked my candles before it was party time. I usually have a number candle for the child because that's what they like. Well, I had two fives, but I didn't have an 8 - so you'll see in the picture of the two kids and the cake that Beth's has a 7 and then there's a regular candle right in front of it.

Anyway - they both had significant birthdays this year.... Beth turned 8, the age where she was able to choose whether or not to be baptized... as you'll see from another post, she made the choice for herself and did indeed get baptized. And Peter turned 5 - so he'll be heading to school in the fall. It's hard for me to think about the last few months that I'll have of him being young enough to stay home ---- can we say: Mommy's starting to realize just how old she's getting to be.