Our year always starts with a bang! After dad goes back to work we start party planning season. Jen's birthday is in January and Michael's follows 3 weeks later-just enough time to celebrate, recover, plan and celebrate again :-)
For the past two years I've asked Jenna exactly what type of party she would like to have. Last year she wanted a Princess Party and this year it was a Kitty and Puppy party. I love the way that her choices reflect who she is. She is our princess who totally adores her cats!
This year she even decided what she would like to do at her party! She gave me an explanation for her theme choice: the girls are the kitties and the boys are the puppies and they'll chase each other. We discussed which games she'd like to play and she creatively changed Duck, duck, goose to Cat, cat,dog. She also remembered a game we had played at her third birthday party: catch the fish, and asked if she could play that again. All kittens like to eat fish don't they? So half the party was planned for me already-all I had to do was plan one or two more activities, party food and a cake.
Mmmmm a cake!? Baking a cake in our unreliable oven just wasn't going to work-so we phoned Granny and asked if she'd bake and then we'd decorate. This turned out to be such a great idea in the end-I really didn't realise how much I worried about having a cake that would flop. Actually I had very little to do with the cake at all. Last year my husband showed great cake decorating skills so I handed the job over to him and together with Jenna's help this is what they created:
Jenna just loved the whole experience and it was such fun to watch them work together. You can't see them here but she also insisted on having little pink and white butterflies around the side of the cake. What can I say, the girl knows what she wants!
The rest of the party planning was left up to me and together with Dad's creative computer design skills we created masks for the kids to colour in. (yes, he is quite a handy chap to have around :-)
Jenna decorating her mask with a little bit of help from her friend.
Which little puppy is hiding behind this mask?
A litter of kittens and puppies.
Cat, cat, dog. (and if you're a boy:that'll be dog, dog, cat)
Team work to blow out the candles.
And three weeks later we were celebrating Michael's third birthday. Deciding on a theme was not that difficult-convincing his sister that he should choose his own theme and not use her idea took a little longer. But this time mommy did know better and she soon decided that a Tigger theme had already been done for his First birthday and a CAR theme was definitely more suitable for her car-loving brother.
So we made steering wheels to use on our race track. (unfortunately we didn't take any photos of that as we were so busy helping the kids around the course)
We raced balloons-which were supposed to have a car drawn on them but that part didn't work so well. The races were fun though!
It's amazing how kids just love balloons-after the race they all wanted to keep their balloon-but it was impossible to part the balloon from the tape without making big holes. So luckily we had back up balloons in their party bowls.
It was so interesting to see the competitive side come out of some of the kids. I was really proud of Jenna-who was beaten by James- she had a moment of sadness cross her face and then decided to shake away the tears and just move on! Well done precious!
I suppose I should have realised that having a car theme would result in LOTS of car presents....
but each present was opened with just as much excitement as the previous one by our little car loving man. And since the party Jenna and Michael have spent hours playing with his new cars. He already has a favourite picked out: a BMW, just like his daddy's car! :-)