Yo! Jack's Birthday Party Was Awesommme

I had SUCH a fun time planning Jack's birthday party. It was his first party with friends and I think he had a great time. Matt and I agreed that he probably didn't realize that the party was for him but he certainly had a good time being there.

Of course there are many things I would have done differently in hindsight, but I will just take them as lessons learned for next time. I thought I had all my bases covered because I did so much ahead of time but there were still last minute issues that caused me to still be setting up for the party when guests arrived. I think it was 5 minutes after the party started before I was done and I definitely didn't have things looking exactly as I had envisioned. The DVD player that we brought didn't work with the equipment at the site so my mom had to run to Target at the last minute to get another DVD player. That left me frazzled and with a "man down" on the set-up team. Without that extra set of hands, I just couldn't get everything done. Next time I plan to give myself an extra half hour to set up just in case we have technical difficulties like we did on Saturday.

Here are a ton of pictures from Saturday. I hope when Jack looks at these pictures when he is older he understands how much love was put into this party. We know he won't remember the event, most likely, but we hope he remembers the feeling he had when he was there.

Our theme was Yo Gabba Gabba since that is Jack's favorite show. But...I didn't want to go overboard with YGG stuff everywhere so I focused on the main colors from the show and then threw in the characters as accents. We sent each child a t-shirt with their invitation and they all wore them to the party. It was so fun to see all the little characters walking around.

My friend, Aaron, cut out all of the characters for us and my dad painted them and built stands for both inside and outside. I really appreciate all the work they put into these decorations. They really brought the party to life and the kids had a great time playing with them.

Here are the characters that were outside for everyone to see when they came into the party. This is Jack seeing them for the first time. We managed to hide everything from him for weeks while they were being built and painted. I think it is safe to say he loved them!

Here he is discovering his favorite character and running toward him at full speed.
...And tackling him, of course, like any boy in love tends to do.

My banner...that Matt hung for me...which is not at all how I envisioned it looking. I think we can safely say that his "man card" is totally safe because it is very clear that a man did this. I did appreciate his help, though, and luckily he doesn't read my blog so he won't even know that I the (ahem) great job he did. *cough*

The drink table. I didn't get pictures of it before people arrived so this is after a few kids picked their cups. We did the 6 colors of YGG for everything--the table cloths, the cups, the napkins, the plates, the favor bags and the balloons.

The view of the gift table as guests begin to arrive. We put the banner Aunt Debbie made on that table.

I didn't get a good picture of the food table but we carried the color theme with the food, too. The veggies were 5 of the 6 colors (no blue veggies) and the fruit was all 6 colors of YGG. We also had cheese, tortilla roll-ups and applesauce for the really little ones. The plates and napkins were multicolored to match the rest of the room. This table was really the most neglected due to the loss of one of my helpers. I had a better set up planned, with more decoration and a more interesting layout, but just didn't get to it before the party started.

Here is a view of most of the tables all together. One of the major drawbacks of the location was that we couldn't decorate the walls at all. I was disappointed that we couldn't do more with banners or painted scenes because it does look sort of bare, but the actual space of the room turned out to be perfect. It was just big enough for all of us and the kids could run around with no worries that they would hurt themselves or break anything in the room.

The other thing I wasn't able to do before guests arrived was place the candied marshmallows in coordinating color dishes as I had planned. I had m&ms that matched each color of the marshmallows that I intended to set up on the favor table but since I ran out of time, I just put them all in two dishes. The only way to see them is to click on the picture and look at the favor table. The good news is that they still tasted great and were a favorite treat for many of the kids--Jack included.

Speaking of favor bags...here are some of the things that were in them...

One of the segments of YGG has a story of gum balls. They sing the "Goodbye" song, which is about not throwing a fit when it is time to say goodbye because we will see our friends again soon. (love that lesson!) So we had color coordinated gum ball machines in the gift bags.

Here is the complete set of items in the gift bags. Matt made CDs with all the Gabba songs for the kids. We also had bags for the kids under 1 with more appropriate toys (read: less fun) for that age group.

Here are the cupcakes that I made on Friday. They are chocolate with a cream filling and a buttercream frosting (like a ding dong on crack). I'm always a fan of sweets so I am not a good judge of how they tasted. Matt, however, almost never eats sweets but he ate two of these cupcakes. I take that as a sign that they were yummy.
These are sugar cookies made to look like the Gabba characters. I LOVE the way they turned out. They are almost too cute to eat. Almost.
One of the other reasons I loved this location when we were planning the party was because it had a built in projection system that allowed us to play the YGG DVD for the kids. The music played on the speaker system and the kids watched the show and danced along to the music during the party.

I love this picture for several reasons. First, you see the girls sitting and watching the show while the boys run around in circles (which is why the picture is slightly blurry when you click on the enlarged version). Also, you see Addy in jeans and a sweater while her husband is wearing shorts and short sleeves. But best of all is the look on Barry's face as he watches Jack and Conrad chase each other around. I think he wishes that these boys could just sit every once in a while.

Here is Skyler hanging out with Brobie and Toodie. She looks so cute with her Plex t-shirt and black leggings.

This is Denali, Jack's future girlfriend. She is going to be 1 in 4 months, so clearly he is attracted to younger women. She is so adorable, so I don't blame him for being in love.

Jack and his DJ Lance Rock hat. He was dancing around the room--which might have something to do with the candy he was eating...we pretty much failed to keep an eye on how many sweets he was eating. Parenting Fail.

And now on to some of the inside decorations that my dad made for the room. Aaron also cut these characters out of wood for us. This time, he cut holes in the space where the faces were so the kids could stick there faces through. They loved doing that and I was able to get quite a few pictures of kids trying out the different characters.

Olivia as Foofa.

Annabelle as Muno

Alston, Conrad and Jack playing with the characters.

Conrad as Muno.

Kendel as Toodie

Avery obviously didn't have any fun at all. *wink*

Skyler got in on the fun, too.

Jack as Plex

And then as Brobie.

Avery as Foofa.

Even some of the adults got in the spirit. Liz and Kelly are always up for a good time!

Next up, we got a visit from a very special guest. DJ Lance Rock showed up to the party!!

Actually, it was more like DJ Poppa Rock, but we'll take it. My dad dressed in an orange spandex suit with nerd glasses and a fuzzy hat to entertain the kids. But more than that, he also led the group in a few Dancey Dances! It was so funny to watch.

Here he is doing the "Crazy Daisy" and you can see some of the kids dancing along.

It was so much fun to watch. Avery loved it and Jack's BFF, Conrad, was having a blast. Jack, however, was in total shock and didn't think it was very fun at all. He was scared to death and just wanted me to hold him the whole time.

I just couldn't keep holding him when it was time to do the "Puppet Master" dance. It's my favorite. :-)
My mom did a great job taking pictures for most of the party. Thanks for being the camera woman, mom!!

After DJ Poppa Rock led some dances he got everyone to sing Happy Birthday to Jack. My Big Brave Boy was still too scared to let me put him down. And when everyone was done singing Happy Birthday he thanked the group by giving them all the big stink eye. I wish we had a picture of that because it was so funny.

Of course, as soon as my dad was gone Jack started asking, "Where's Gabba? Where did Gabba go? What happened to Gabba?" And they say girls are finicky!

Next we had a game for the adults to play. I had scratch off lotto tickets (which I failed to get a picture of) that the adults scratched to see if they were the winner. Our winner, Marc, had to lead the group in a Dancey Dance. I have this picture of all of us doing his Dancey Dance but I don't have a picture of Marc leading us in it. bummer. Marc was a good sport for playing along.

Then it was time to eat some cupcakes!!

Conrad liked his cupcake so much that he put some in his nose for later. I love this messy face!

Avery posed with Kendel and Olivia, two of her favorite friends in the whole wide world.

And since we had all the kids in Gabba shirts, I thought it would be cute to get a group shot of everyone. Easier said than done when you are dealing with mostly 2 year olds (and younger!) so I thought I would share a few of the attempts to get the perfect picture.

The left side of the group was ready to go rather quickly so I thought I would take a picture of at least one side just in case...

...And then the right side started to come together a little more...except for Jack, who is nowhere to be found...
...and then we managed to throw Jack on Avery's lap at the last second, which served only to block Kendel from the picture. Also, there are kids on the other side of Emmie and Josalyn (far right) that I just couldn't get in because they couldn't scoot over close enough...
....and finally we start to lose them as kids start turning around and crawling out of the picture. We didn't get anything "perfect" but the shots we got make me laugh and I think they really capture the essence of the group. Bonus points for having criers! lol.

Matt had Avery cracking up while they were taking this picture. She thought it was funny that he would get behind a character since he was so much bigger than Muno.

We took a family picture just before it was time to leave.

Jack's facial expressions crack me up.

Here is a great shot of mom and dad. I appreciate all of their help before, during and after the party!

I have always said that mom and Aunt Debbie are a couple of characters.

My attempt at a family picture wearing our Gabba shirts because I know I will never get Matt to wear his again. Jack refused to be in the picture because he wanted to be reading a new Gabba book he got. Matt looks drunk but it's just an unfortunately timed blink.

This is what Jack was doing while we were trying to take a quick family picture before the UK game started. Of course, what we didn't realize at the time was that the UK game would not be on TV here because a Big 12 team was playing so our station broadcast that game instead. Matt had some choice words for our CBS station.

Jack didn't care which teams were playing because he was enjoying his new book. He was "reading" to himself in the chair.

Thanks to everyone who came to the party and a special thanks to those of you who helped pull this off. My friend Michelle made the shirts, Aaron made the wood cut outs, my dad painted 3 sets of Gabba characters (1 set outside and 2 for inside) and provided our entertainment, my Aunt helped make bean bags for the favors and she helped set up, and my mom helped set up the party and took most of the pictures.

Jack had a great time and I think our friends did, too. In my next post I plan to write about the gifts Jack received at the party. We have been playing playing playing with all the brand! new! toys! all day.

A Year in Review

13 months

14 months

15 months

16 months

17 months

18 months

19 months

20 months

21 months

22 months

23 months

2 years old.

Happy Birthday to my little man!

Birthday Week

I asked my Aunt Debbie to help make this table runner for us to have on our dining room table during Jack's birthday week. (And by "help" I mean that I came up with the idea, picked out the fabric and design and Aunt Debbie did everything else.) She is also making one for Avery's birthday week. I love how great Jack's table runner turned out and I really appreciate all the work she put into it.

I put it on our dining room table last night and it will stay there all week in honor of his birthday this Thursday. He still really doesn't get it that it is his birthday. We keep asking him how old he is and he (correctly, technically) says "ONE!" We try and coax him into saying "two" but he just laughs at us and shows us the number 1 with his pointer finger. (I thought it was important to identify the exact finger he uses to show us his age just in case you thought my toddler might be street savvy enough to actually give us "the finger" in response to our repeated questions. He's good...but he isn't that good.)

I've asked him if he wants me to bring cupcakes to school this week and he nods his head and says yes, but I don't think he would refuse food under any circumstance so that isn't really a sign that he understands that Thursday is a Special Day. We've told him that we are going to have a birthday party for him and his friends will come and we'll sing "Happy Birthday To You" but he usually stops us there with a hearty "No HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU" and makes the cutest frowny face you have ever seen. It's clear that he has learned from the best and his "terrible two's" will resemble Avery's terrible 3's.

Go figure.

Here's a closer look at the table runner (you can usually click on the pictures to enlarge, also). I look forward to using this every year. Now I just need to find a good spot to store it so that I remember where it is next year. That is much harder for me than it sounds, unfortunately.

What Has Been Keeping Me Busy

Jack will be 2 this week. TWO. I'm not even going to write about how bittersweet that is. At least not tonight. Tonight I just want to give a sneak peak at what I have been working on for Jack's birthday party next weekend. He's a big fan of Yo Gabba Gabba so we're going with that theme for his party.


We sent each child a Yo Gabba t-shirt along with their invitation. My friend, Michelle, helped me with the shirts (and by help I mean that I bought all the shirts and fabric, sent her a picture of each character, and then she made every single one of them.) Brobie is missing from this picture because Jack will be the only one wearing a Brobie shirt. I didn't want him to see it before Saturday so I haven't had it anywhere in sight.

Matt helped me make the invitation (and by help I mean that I picked out the theme, the wording and the font style and Matt did everything else). See a pattern here?

Ignore the background because I have this banner hanging on my "catch all" bookcase. I made this happy birthday banner featuring all of the Gabba colors because I was trying not to go overboard with the character theme so I am playing off the colors more than anything.
I made these for the cupcakes. I found some super cute ideas for a big cake but I really just think cupcakes are better for this age group because they are easier to handle. Plus, most 2 year olds I know enjoy eating with their hands so this gives them the perfect excuse.

It's been a real team effort to get everything ready. Besides the help I got from Matt and my friend Michelle, my dad made some amazing decorations for the party that we have managed to keep hidden from the kids for the last month. My aunt made the bean bags for one of the games. My friend, Aaron, did some wood work for us. I'm looking forward to seeing Jack's face when he sees it all. This is Jack's first birthday party with friends so hopefully it all goes well. I hope it ends up being as fun to be a guest as it has been being the party planner.

Good Luck, Aunt Tina

Tina's Dance Team is going to the Illinois State finals this weekend so Avery is wearing her Fieldcrest Dance shirt to show her support.

Good luck, girls! We're cheering for you from Texas!!

Baby's First Pedicure

One of the hard parts about having such a cautious child is that you really never know how she is going to react to new experiences. Something as simple as going to the movies can turn into a nightmare as she covers her ears and proclaims that it is too loud. Jumping in a bouncy castle at a birthday party is normally the highlight for kids. Not for my kid. She would stand outside and watch the other kids squeal with delight as they bounced all over the place. But she would scream and cry with a terrified look on her face if we ever put her near the entrance of one. It wasn't until well after she was 3 years old that she shocked us all by going in one at a festival. She loved it, of course, which made us all want to say something along the lines of, "SEE! WE TOLD YOU SO! ALL THAT CRYING FOR NOTHING."

But I digress.

The point is, I am slow to introduce her to new things because I never know which kid I am going to get. Will she scream and cry and throw a huge fit or will she think it is totally great and just relax and enjoy the experience? Sometimes it just isn't worth finding out.

I was feeling brave today, though, and decided to take Avery along with me when I met my mom for a pedicure. I talked to Avery about what it was going to be like so she would know what to expect but I have done that plenty of times before with no good results so I had a back up plan in my head just in case. I also drove separately from my mom so she could still enjoy herself if I had to take a screaming child home.

Turns out, Avery surprised the heck out of me. She loved it! She couldn't have been happier or more pleasant to be around. She was friendly with the staff and (probably overly) talkative with the guy who did her nails. THE GUY, which was something I did not think to prepare her for. Plus, she was in the kid's seat at the front of the salon while my mom and I were seated in the two furthest seats from her. She wasn't phased by that at all. My heart sort of burst with pride in the way she was behaving, which sounds silly because we are talking about a PEDICURE (and a manicure that she charmed herself into) but when you have a child who is always so tentative about every little experience, you celebrate your victories whenever you can. I really thought that she would either scream and cry or that she would sit there totally silent and slightly frightened while someone removed her nail polish, cut her nails (oh the agony!) and painted them a new color. I truly never expected her to enjoy it as much as she did.


Here's Avery introducing herself to the woman filling the water in her tub. She started by saying, "my name is Avery," and she shared with the woman that I told her to wear flip flops. The woman said absolutely nothing back to her but it didn't seem to bother Avery at all.
She sat right down in the chair and began soaking her feet after she picked out the "blue sparkly nail polish."
I attempted to play a video for her but the machine wasn't really working well. It didn't matter, though, because she was totally happy to just chat with this poor man. I couldn't always hear what she was saying but she talked the entire time. One time I did hear her tell him that her Grammie paints her nails red when she spends the night on the weekend.
She looked like such a big girl as she sat down at the other end of the shop and got her nails done as if she had done this 1000 times before. She's a natural at this whole pampering thing. I believe we have just opened up a whole new can of worms.
After she was done, she came over to where we were sitting to chat up the ladies and point out all the different colors in the shop. She was so excited she could hardly stop herself from jumping up and down. She danced around the room. Within a few minutes she had to go potty and when she came out of the restroom she expressed concern that washing her hands might ruin her paint job.

Oh yes. We have probably just uncovered the diva in her.

It was worth it, though, because seeing her take on that new experience so fearlessly gives me hope that we will see more and more of that behavior as she gets older. Today: The Pedicure. Tomorrow: perhaps she will be able to go to Sunday School without me there.

A mother can always dream.

A Post About Nothing

Oh man. Things have been so busy. I just can't seem to pack everything into a 24 hour period. Everything I am doing is very positive but it has kept me away from updating here, which is one of my favorite things to do. My room is the other victim of my hectic schedule these days. The teenager in me comes out in full force when I am busy and my room begins to look like it belongs on an episode of Hoarders. Thankfully Matt is almost the same way so he doesn't seem to get too irritated with me that we have piles of stuff all over the place.

I've been making cake balls a lot lately which is very exciting. It's nowhere near enough to quit my job or anything but it has been fun to be able to bake every week. I am making 6 dozen tonight, in fact. During the week it takes me two nights to get them done so that really creates a scheduling challenge but I get almost everything done.

I've also been getting ready for Jack's birthday. He turns two later this month and I wanted to get everything done for our celebration by the first of the month. That's because Matt's friend, Jason, is coming to visit next week so I know I won't have Matt around to help with anything then. I know that because I told him to go stay at our friend Josh's house while Jason is visiting so they can have a good time without worrying about waking the kids at night. Not sure what I was thinking when I told him that he could go on a "staycation" while I take care of the house and kids but it was totally my idea.

Must be a result of lack of sleep. Or a brain tumor. One of those.

Anyway, here are some pictures for the family to enjoy. I should have time to post something more substantial by the weekend. I hope.

Avery on Saturday before we went to a birthday party. It's so strange to know that she is standing in the same spot where she played in the snow just 4 days earlier. It was close to 70 and sunny over the weekend.
Avery is so cautious even though the dog is clearly outside and the doggy door is locked so there is no way he will get inside. She'll probably grow up to be some kind of adventurist but for now she is the most cautious child in the world.

playing at the park

Jack and I went to the park today to get his 2 year pictures taken. He let me take a couple of pictures after his session. He was pretty obnoxious during the whole photo shoot. All he wanted to do was play and go on the swing set. It was difficult to get many good shots of him. I just can't understand why he would prefer to slide and swing rather than pose for pictures.

Some people are just so difficult to work with.

He is definitely going to be a rough-and-tumble 2 year old. He is so strong and the worst part of that is that he doesn't know his own strength so we are often the victims of being loved TOO much when he rams into us to give us hugs. We'll take it, though, because I know there will come a day when he won't want to hug us as much as he does now. I just think maybe we need some padding so we aren't black and blue all the time.