Birthdays

Both of my babies had birthdays this summer!

I love to celebrate birthdays without having a huge birthday blowout. My expectations are low. All I want is cake, balloons, a few presents, and a few friends to celebrate with.

Since we have a pool, my children will probably have swimming parties the rest of their childhood.

(Those are mosquito bites on her face)

While I would love to invite all of our friends and have a top-notch party, that just isn't realistic right now. Having a swimming party with more that 10 children is stressful instead of fun. It is just dangerous to have too many children that can't swim (or can't swim well) at one time.

So for Millie's 4th birthday, which was on a Monday, we just had a few other 4 year old girls over for lunch, cake, and swimming. Millie loved it, and it was easy for me!

Millie loves flamingos, so we had a 'Pink Flamingo Swimming Party.'

This was the first year I got more decorations than just balloons, and when I say 'more' I mean a pinata and some plastic flamingos. While I love to have a celebration, I don't love spending a lot of money on decorations. All of these decorations came from the Dollar Tree. I think I spent about $8 on everything not including the balloons. 

My favorite birthday tradition is picking out the book for our guest to sign. This cute book was my choice this year. It is about a flamingo that changes colors depending on what she eats. 

And later in the summer James turned 2! I still feel like he should be crawling around, wearing onesies, and eating nothing but cheerios. However, he is a big boy who loves to talk, sing and pick out his own snack and TV show!

He also likes to play dress up with Millie. The Elsa dress was normally his outfit of choice. So for this birthday I decided to get him some boy costumes that I thought he would enjoy. 

He got a Woody (Toy Story) and Olaf (Frozen) costume because those are his favorite characters. I also gave him a Tiger costume from Winnie the Pooh. 

He was unsure about what to do with the Woody outfit until Millie tried it on. Then he got upset and wore it for the next couple of hours.

To celebrate we had a few of James's two year old friends and their families over for pizza and swimming.

The theme of James's party was colors. I didn't decide on a theme until a few days before when I found this cute book. I know it has been out a while, but this was my first time to read it. The stacking crayons were the party favors.

I found the multi-colored plates and napkins at Target. James insisted on the Mickey Mouse and Olaf dessert plates. The different colored balloons and zinnias from our yard completed the color look.

Cousin Caroline was the center of attention for the big girls. They just sat and looked at her.

Thank you Lord for my beautiful babies. Thank you that we can celebrate their births. Thank you for friends that celebrate with us. Thank you for these precious gifts. May we have many more birthdays to celebrate!