Happy Birthday!

This weekend we had a joint birthday party for Caleb and Ethan (their birthdays are 12 days apart). We invited friends from church and the preschool children of Marcus's coworkers. My parents also drove from Searcy to help out with the party. I did an all-sport theme, since both boys are very into all kinds of balls. We originally planned to have it at a community park, but it was wet and rainy, so we moved it to the church at the last minute instead.

There were ten preschool children and thirteen adults at the party. We’ve done a birthday party for Caleb every year, but this was the first year that he (and the other kids) were old enough to play some games and have some activities at the party. We started out with me leading the kids in Duck, Duck, Goose and then Simon Says. Then Marcus led Follow the Leader and Musical Chairs. We didn’t play by the rules (nobody was eliminated from any of the games), but the kids all laughed a lot and had a lot of fun. At first Caleb didn’t want to play Follow the Leader, but he ended up following the last person out of the room and he was laughing with everyone else when the group marched back in. I held Ethan and "helped" him participate in the games. He loved watching the other kids run around and act silly.

Next, everyone headed to the church auditorium where we had cleared the chairs and set up a small basketball goal and two soccer goals. The kids played ball together for about 30 minutes while the adults visited. Then we headed back to the classroom to sing Happy Birthday, eat cake and snacks, and open presents.

I made two separate cakes, one for Caleb and one for Ethan, so we sang individually to each boy, and they both loved the attention. And unlike the past two years, Caleb quickly downed his slice of cake, and even asked for more! I guess his sugar tolerance has increased this year! And (amazingly) Ethan ate an entire adult-sized slice of chocolate cake by himself. Nanna was holding him and feeding him bites from his plate, and she looked down to see that the entire thing was gone!

After we had cake, Caleb passed out favor bags to each child and (with a little prompting) gave each one and hug and thanked him/her for coming to the party. Then he opened all of the presents (Ethan had no interest). It was a little challenging to get through the presents because Caleb (and the other kids) wanted to play with each new toy rather than open another present. During the presents, Marcus and a couple of other guys were back in the auditorium inflating a bouncy house.

The last 45 minutes of the party consisted of running around and jumping inside the inflatable bounce house. Everyone had a lot of fun with the games, the balls and the bouncing, and therefore the birthday party was a success!