Birthday Mania

Birthday Month has come and gone. Three birthdays between the 6th and 16th...thank you very much.

Lyndsey's was the first. It was September 6th. She was turning eight!! Of course she was lucky enough to have it land on Baptism Saturday. I noticed this would happen about a year ago. The wheels turned in my head and I though how cool and convenient it would be to have a kidlet birthday party/ extended family party for all three kids/ baptism celebration all in ONE DAY! Yea!!! Months of planning...First the perfect dress for my last baby and of course a cute photo of her in it.

Then we made the perfect invite (two kinds of course- one for the baptism and one for the kidlet party). Then I had to arrange all the food: Pizza, salad, veggie tray, fruit, bread sticks, appetizer, drinks, cake etc... for an army of 40 people. Then Lyndsey decided it would be fun to have a tea party complete with a craft for twelve little girls. They would make tea party bonnets (supervised by 6 adults). The straw hats turned out to not be easy to find and when I did, I bought out two stores worth. I had to also find the perfect flowers, netting and ribbon. The logistics of the party were mind boggling: be at a niece's wedding the night before, get everyone up and in church clothes and to the church at 9:30 AM on the morning of. Then someone thought it would be nice to have "a display table" with a book to sign for visitors. Please, this was supposed to be simple. It feels like a wedding.

After three loooonnng baptisms with over a hundred people in attendance, we finished and moved onto the party part. We had invited the little party girls to the baptism and had to transport them to the party.

Once we got there we had kids running all over the house; we were trying to bake 6 pizzas and get the food ready and I was trying to round up little girls to make there craft. We had a bit of dilemma with a father asking if his younger daughter could come to the party too (what??? why do men create such social blunders. What could I say? Of course I graciously said sure) now I wouldn't have enough hats. It was stressful but worked out in the end when a girl who was at the baptism didn't show up to the party (whew!)

Several adults wrangled hot glue guns, flowers and bows onto hats and we settled down for a tea party with china and lemonade. The girls looked adorable and finally we were able to feed the crowd who was patiently waiting for the cooking pizzas to be done and the craft to be finished.

There was lots of food and more people kept showing up (I will save you from the details). Now it was present time. Relatives brought presents for all three kids. We had our presents for Lynz and her friends of course brought gifts. Then there were more baptism gifts and cards. Wrapping paper, tissue paper, plates, cups and napkins of paper. A new hamster for Lynz running loose in his ball. Kids and people in my house and yard. FINALLY, the joy was over. It took the whole rest of the weekend to recover and then... and a few days later...It was Sarah's birthday.