(Nana made Declan's cake and it was super cute and deelish!)
Well only a month late - but the boy's birthday party was great. In my head it was going to be a beautiful early Spring afternoon, we were going to grill out in the backyard, let the kids jump on the trampoline, ride the rollercoaster, fish in our little creek, blow bubbles, chase each other around etc etc etc.....good idea right?
It monsooned from like Thursday on.......until Sunday morning when we woke up to a really nice, pleasant, sunny day! Too bad the party was on Saturday. And when I say monsoon, I'm not exaggerating. Promise. Maybe a little....but the rain was intense and it was fuh-reezing so there was no grilling and hanging and playing.
Moving an outside party, inside, was stressful for me but luckily my mom was here and Paul's family was here so everyone helped out a ton to prep. Thursday, Carol picked Declan up from school and he got to spend the afternoon swimming and hanging with his cousins which was super fun for him and it let my mom and i clean and organize and tryyyyy to figure out what we would do with 40 people in our small house.
Friday was lots of running around but the best surprise ever that night came when my brother walked thru our door at 10:30pm! FROM NEW YORK CITY! Feb is right in the middle of his busy season for work so even though I begged him to come he had convinced me that there was really no way, even though he totally wanted to, that he would be able to make it. But then tricky Uncle D showed just how much he loves his nephews and surprised everyone with a quick flight down from the big city to the dirty dirty dirty :) That was the best present ever.
Saturday came and while I was still holding out hope that for some unknown reason every weather report would be wrong, they weren't, and it was still monsooning so we blew up tons of balloons and put them upstairs for the kids to play with. Not the "party" I had hoped for for the boys and certainly not the one we had been telling Declan about BUT as always, kids are so easy and resilient and not one of them cared. They had such a fun time running around with each other, kicking and throwing balloons everywhere, playing with "new" (not their) toys so it was wonderful and Declan had a BLAST.
I love seeing him with his buddies and I totally had a moment when everyone sang "happy birthday" to him. It hit like me like a Mac truck, seeing the look on his face like "oh my gosh i can't believe every person here is singing to ME" - it was the most innocent most excited sweetest face I've seen on him. Oh. I balled. Embarrassing really...but he was so freaking cute...my little buddy. Big buddy, really.
THIS FACE (thank you so much Nancy for capturing this) but this was the face that made me cry so very hard......he just couldn't believe everyone was there for HIM and singing to HIM. this beautiful mix of embarrassment and shyness/super excitement on the inside...)
Caught yaaaaa
Then it was Carrig's turn! Ummmmm................homeboy can eat. This was not a surprise and as texture-weird as Declan was (he wanted nothing to do with his cake at 1yr old), C is the exact opposite and went in full force. He was hilarious and we completely had to cut him off or he would eaten the entire thing.
All in all it was a great day and it turned out fine even though it wasn't anything that we had "planned" or hoped for but I think that's kind of life, huh? Planning with children is such a losing battle. Good thing we have really really reaaaaally cute ones that keep us "planners" smiling even when things don't go the way we once thought they would.....
We got to have one last little breakfast with my family and then everyone had to leave :(
Happy Happy Happy Birthday(s) to our sweet, beautiful little buddies.
(Massive shout out to my sister in law for being the unofficial photog for the party. Any good picture I have is because of her! Thanks nan love u!)
