Birthday! Birthday! Party!! Party!!

September is a huge birthday month for the Hannants!!  We have starting on the 11th my Dad's Birthday, the 15th is our beautiful Sydney's day, the 16th is our nephew Damon's, the 21st is Dave's Dad's, the 22nd is our awesome Noah's and the 28th is our nephew Isaac's.  It is truly a busy birthday month.  

Last year around Sydney's birthday and actually on Noah's we moved from Idaho to Washington.  Needless to say these kiddos didn't get a very fun birthday!  Or in Noah's case one at all.  So this year we promised them parties.  Or Dave did anyway.  He's the party guy.  He grew up having birthday parties.  I had one.  My birthday's were in the summer and most people were on vacation or had things to do.  So I would always invite a good friend to come have a sleepover and watch movies.  

Somehow with Dave's promise of a party I get to plan and make it happen.  He is usually there and helped a bunch this year with Noah's and made the pizza for Sydney's.  I don't want you to think Dave doesn't do anything.  He's usually working while I'm getting stuff ready.  And this year he was at football practice with Noah for sydney's.  

Sydney decided she wanted a barbie party.  I looked at the barbie party stuff and it was mostly gross so I decided to give her a fancy, pink, girly party.  Sydney's birthday party was a week after her birthday so there are two sets of pictures.  

Here is Sydney modeling the hat and hair accessories that her Aunt Emilee made her.  Just her style.  

Here is my girl wearing a little sparkle we gave her.  She is loves to dazzle.  

Here is her cake.  It was delicious too.  

The Big 7!  She's a pretty amazing girl.  

This is the start of Sydney's party pics.  We had a dress up area where they could get all dressed up and get their picture taken.  It was really cute!  Aunt Emilee is a life saver and helped get everything set up.  Ok she didn't just help.  She did it all!  Thanks Emilee.

The clothes waiting to be put on.  It wouldn't be fancy without feather boas.  

The vanity.  Make up and nail polish awaited the girls.  

Here is the craft table.  Each girl got a pair of pink flip flops to decorate.  There were also beads for the girls to make bracelets.  

Here is the food table.  We had pizza and watermelon.  Of course there were lots and lots of mini cupcakes.  Mini cupcakes are so much more fancy.  

Another view of the cupcake centerpiece.  Why yes I did eat about 50 of these all by myself.  

Sydney after she had done her makeup and put on the dress ups.  She seems pretty happy.  

My littlest Abby who loved being one of the big girls.  She dresses up great!!

The cupcakes were a hit.  They were literally climbing over the table to get them.  I did give them a limit of 3 and they could take some home.  

We had Sydney's party the day before Noah's birthday.  I remember when I was expecting Sydney my due date was the 21st and Noah was so scared he was going to have to share his 4th and every birthday after with a new sister.  We promised it wouldn't be that way.  So he got his own party on his actual birthday.

He went to his football game first, which they didn't win, but played pretty well and scored a couple of times.  Then after the game we gave the boys some cookies, they sang Happy Birthday to Noah and proceeded to soak him with all of their water bottles.  He was squishing as he walked.  He complained about the ice, but I know he was happy.

Noah decided (with a little help) that he wanted a Minute to Win It!  party.  If you've ever seen the game show on TV you know what I'm talking about.  If you haven't google it and try some of the games.  You will laugh!  So we spent the morning getting all ready for the party and I finished up his cake.  I didn't finish it because I ran out of time.  150 mini cupcakes take a little while to decorate.

Here is Noah holding up one of his presents.  Lego transformers.  Noah loves to build with legos.  He wants to be a builder when he grows up.  

Here is Noah's cake.  It is the timer from the game show.  That's what he said he wanted.  I did my best and it turned out pretty good.  It's a little hard to read because of the white frosting.

Just in case anyone forgot why we were eating it!!

Why yes that is panty hose on my kids' heads.  This is a game called elephant walk.  I thought it was one of the funniest.  They had to knock down bottles of water with golf balls in the end of a pair of panty hose which is worn on one's head like an elephant trunk.  You have to keep one foot on either side of the center line (the green tape).  And no hands.  It was awesome.  Here is Noah giving it a try.  He got 7 of the 8 bottles in a minute.  

Here is Jacob giving it a try.  He was the WINNER!  He knocked down all 8 in 40 seconds!  That kid knows how to work the elephant trunk.  

Even Abby got in on the action.  She did pretty great too.   She had really good control.  I'm thinking being short was an advantage for once.  

More presents.  I don't remember adding this one, but it's here so it must need to be seen.

Singing Happy Birthday and getting ready to blow out the candles.  As I was putting them on it seemed sort of small and I realized I was still in 7 mode and had put 7 candles on the cake.  Don't worry we added 4 more to make it 11.  He wasn't shorted on his wishes.   

I don't know how this got out of order but I'm too tired to move it.  Here is another game that was hilarious.  Yes those are cotton balls stuck to his face.  You stick your nose in petroleum jelly and then stick it in a bunch of cotton balls.  You have to run to the end of the table and shake them off onto a plate or bowl.  It has to stay on/in the plate/bowl to count.  They were definitely shiny after this game.

It was such a great birthday weekend.  The kids had a blast.  My next party I think I'll do Minute to Win It! again, but this time I'm having a couples party!  It should be so fun!!!

I love you Sydney and Noah!!  I'm so proud to be your mom!  You are truly great kids.   

Happy Birthday!! with a side of pain.

We were just down in Portland to do a surprise party for my dad!!  Tomorrow is his 70th birthday!!  That doesn't seem right... but it is.  I think he is healthier than the rest of us and I think he doesn't look anything like what I picture a 70 year old to look like.  Of course that might be because he is still 69.

We decided to try to pull off a surprise party.  Notice the word try!  My dad somehow always knows when something is going on.  He just has a sixth sense about it.  Kind of irritating.  It steals your thunder.  Anyway...we thought we'd done a pretty good job.

We told him Dave had to visit a client in Longview (he does, just not that day) and since Noah didn't have a football game (he did), we thought we'd come stay for the weekend.  We find out now that my dad thought Dave's reason was not believable.  But he was happy to play along and go golfing for a few hours.

We had around 60 people show up to surprise him.  My brother and nephews even flew out to surprise him.  That part did!  At least we kept something from him.  :)

We ordered his favorite BBQ.  We had their beach friends make homemade ice cream, which was D.E.L.I.C.I.O.U.S.  You have to spell it out and savor the word just like the ice cream.  Plus there was cake, cheesecake and apple pie.  All sorts of yum.  Over all I think he had a wonderful time.

We even sang him a birthday song it goes like this to the tune of Tra la la boom de ay.....This is your birthday song!  It isn't very long!    

It got a big laugh from my dad and everyone else.

So I guess you are asking, what is this pain thing about?  Well I'll tell you.  While getting ready for the party, I was taking a vegetable platter out of the fridge and somehow hit a bottle of apple juice.  Yes I know that doesn't sound very painful.  The apple juice didn't feel a thing.

Well it was on the top shelf and decided to do a perfect 10 dive, cap first, onto my right foot, which happened to only be wearing a flip flop.  It probably wouldn't have hurt so much if it had not been full or landed on a side or something, but it hit my foot straight on.  I'm pretty good at handling pain.  One of the ice cream masters (Dale) was in there with me and said "it's a good thing that didn't land on your foot.  That would have hurt."  I thought he was joking with me.  But I guess I go to a quiet inner place when dealing with pain, because he was surprised when I told him it had landed on my foot.

So anyway I limped around a little bit.  Then put some ice on it.  Then realized one of the guests at the party was  a Podiatrist.  So he took a look at my foot and declared it a Perfect Hematoma.  We are getting perfect scores all around.  He said it didn't appear to be broken, but keep an eye on it.  So it is all good, but very bruised.  It makes me look like my foot is dirty.  It does hurt a bit when I put shoes on, so flip flops it is.

And today my toes are now blue.  But so long as it's not broken and I can get around then Yay!!  I'm happy.

Besides it gives me an excuse to have my kids wait on me.  Is that mean?  I think it's only fair.