Happy Birthday Parties!

It's hard to believe these two cuties are almost SEVEN! But, since they are, we have to celebrate! We did two separate parties in one day again this year; Ali's theme was Monster High and Logan's was Minions. Logan remembered that he got to have his party first last year, so graciously told Ali she could have hers first this year, and that's what we did.

I didn't get to spend as much mental energy on this party as I would have like to because of other things going on in our lives. Add that to the fact that I woke up on Friday, the day before the party, quite sore from (apparently) overdoing it the day before, so I was a little panicked. I had so much left to do, not the least of which was going grocery shopping so I could make and decorate the cakes! Some very heartfelt prayers went Heavenward, and I was so touched and thankful that as my busy day went on I felt better and better instead of the worse and worse I was expecting.

I was super proud and pleased about how the cakes turned out!

I had some help from my artist-in-residence for the party decorations:

As far as games went, we did basically the same thing at each party, and the games didn't necessarily tie into the theme like I would have liked them to, but the kids didn't seem to notice or care. We played musical chairs, pin-the-bow-on-the-monster and pin-the-goggles-on-the-minion, had cup stacking races, monster high/minion egg hunts, a beanbag throw game (I made posters that went with the themes to cover up the sports figures that were actually on the boards, and was pleased that my limited artistic skills made them look more or less how I'd pictured them), bozo buckets, a ring toss game, and pinatas. At Logan's party we also played minion charades, by FAR their favorite game (which totally surprised me, especially with the wild group we had), and they were HILARIOUS to watch as they acted out verbs like sleep, jump, or eat, all the while making minion "boo-baa" sounds of their own accord.

The guest lists kind of snowballed this year, and they each had almost all the kids come that they invited. The sheer number of kids at each party made the events much noisier and crazier than I would have liked, but the kids (and especially mine) seemed to have a good time, so I call them both a victory.