Where's the next party?

When you're two and you love gaboons (balloons) and Elmo, we decided to have a little Elmo party to help Lauren celebrate her birthday.  We were so lucky to have both of our families and the Mowry's come over to help celebrate.

Lauren loves, loves, loves balloons.  And it cracks me up every single time she calls them "gaboons".  She likes the purple ones the best because they are her "favorite".  So we made sure that we had some balloons to help make the place look a bit more festive.  Joshua was a great helper on Friday afternoon and helped me get the balloons where they needed to be.  When Lauren got up from her nap, she exclaimed "Gaboons!  For my party!  Yay!  I love gaboons!"  Mission accomplished.

If these present opening pictures appear a bit chaotic, there would be good reason for that.  The kids had a great time digging through her treasures.  Lauren is a lucky girl- she got a play kitchen, a new baby doll that eats bananas, another baby that rides in her car seat and a stroller, a Dora dress that she loves, and a shopping cart/food.  She got right to work trying out her new goodies and hasn't slowed down since.  I'm getting the idea that Christmas might be fun this year!

I was proud of this picture because I got all of the kids in the same frame.  Of course, none of them are looking at me, but that's OK.  At least all of their little precious heads are accounted for.  (Except Kinley, but I think she was having a bottle right at that moment and probably wanted nothing to do with this mess!)  Please notice that she is wearing her Dora dress on top of her Elmo shirt--- she loves it!

I loved this picture of Lauren and Aunt Libby.  How did that little baby I posted the picture of in the last entry turn into such a big, pretty girl?  And those curls! 

Because of the whole peanut issue, one of my many titles at home is "cake baker".  And when we decided to have an Elmo celebration, I thought I should try my hand at an Elmo cake.  So here's the finished product.  If you look carefully, it is far from perfect and I won't be quitting my day job anytime soon, but it did the trick.  I will say that I would pay big bucks for someone who could guarantee a peanut free bakery to save me this trouble for each of the kids' birthdays.  But until someone comes up with something like that, I guess I'm stuck being the chief cake baker. 

Here's the birthday girl and her cake before we devoured it.  She seemed to love it when we all sang to her and she did a wonderful job blowing out her candles.  She had been practicing for days leading up to her birthday!

And as if all of that partying wasn't enough fun, we headed off to Lewistown the next morning to be on hand to yell "Guprise!" (Surprise) to Uncle Zig at his 30th birthday party that Aunt Libby and some other family members were throwing for him and two of his cousins.  Suffice it to say that when the DJ started playing, my two were among the first on the dance floor.  See?

And after two nights of partying, we crashed at Nana and Pap's for the rest of the night.  The kids got tubbed and curled up on the air mattress with bowls of popcorn and some milk and watched Peter Pan together.  Joshua crashed first (not surprising after all of the air guitar he had been playing).  He and Brooke shared the air mattress until about 4 am when they apparently crashed into each other and both started to cry.  So Joshua relocated to the communal bed upstairs where Lauren and I were already fighting for space (a co-sleeper I will NEVER be) and thus began a few hours of miserable sleep for all three of us.  Nana rocked Brooke back to sleep downstairs and all was well there.  This was Brookie's very first ever sleep over at Nana's and she did awesome!  We were so proud of her!

So, who's having a party this weekend that we can come to?  Just kidding!