A Birthday Celebration: Cake! and a Carousel!

I couldn't believe how these boys devoured their cake. They had just eaten a big dinner! No problem, they were all over it! We used whip cream for the frosting which was nice and messy without being overly sweet and thick, thumbs up.

 Bryson could not wait to dig in.

 Quinn was little more hesitant but got into it later, he didn't get very messy though just straight in the mouth

 They just loved the cake. When they finished their cake and you were holding a baby, they tried to lean way far forward to the cake you were eating (Oreo of course for the adults!)

 So lucky to have my mom there! And Katie is literally a family member in our home right now, she's  a HUGE part of their lives the past year.

 Bryson digging in.

Quinn digging in.

 The next day we made it to the carousel! That's our 1 year birthday celebration for our kids. It was way too little and fast and totally made us adults sick, ha. But they loved it, both babies had huge smiles on their faces :)

The end of birthday celebration week!

A birthday fit for a 28 year old

Mr Casey turned a whopping 28 years old this year. He said he didn't feel any different, ha.

He had a a dang busy day, he wasn't home much at all, all day long. Lots of school and lab work. The 30 minutes between when he got home from school and ran off to his bowling league games we invited friends over at the last minute to sing happy birthday and eat all that yummy cake.

For the 2 hours leading up to when I knew we'd be eating cake I told Max he had to eat his dinner if he wanted any cake. He kept yelling at me no no and more no's that he didn't want dinner or cake. Yeah, uh huh. We were literally getting ready to sing happy birthday and Max was FINALLY shoving dinner down his throat at the last minute. That child… It was a fun quick evening to have friends over.

 Of course I made our delicious traditional oreo cake always, that things NEVER disappoints.

28 candles exactly!

 (isn't this an awesome really awful quality picture of our friends?)

 Bryson be like "Cake? What I'm on that"

 random picture of cute babies

Casey went to bowling that night and one of the other wives were sweet enough to make this awesome cake!

 Casey wanted pedicures for his birthday, he had to drag me screaming and kicking to go with him… ;)
We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

 I texted Casey this picture the day after his birthday and said "happy birthday, I did the dishes"

 Back to Casey's birthday, Max helped make the cake and as much fun as it was and as helpful as he was, it was at the same time and absolutely awful battle of wills… enough said.
Also, Casey's new birthday banner, awesome right?

 And unrelated to the birthday post I was SHOCKED when Max fell asleep watching the iPad, it has never ever happened before, ha. It was after the day I took all 3 kids to the doctor by myself during nap time.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LOVER BUNS!

A birthday fit for a 2 year old.

The days leading up to Maxson's birthday I kept thinking "I have nothing planned really. Nothing." Ok, I did have his presents in the basement but nothing beyond that. The combo of newborn twins and Max is draining me of nearly all my energy, this birthday was gonna be a super duper relaxed one which turned out fabulous in my book. And luckily my son was turning 2 and thus had no expectations, wants, wishes, etc. Let's be honest he had no idea what was going on all day and why, bless his heart for his simplicity.

As soon as Maxson went to bed the night before we got to work putting up the birthday decorations: streamers, signs, balloons, and faces of 1 year old Maxson, we felt all sneaky putting them up, it was so fun.

Well soon after Max woke up the next morning we got him to go downstairs and his face was full of wonder and excitement, so awesome. He was most excited about the balloons on the floor for sure and 2nd came the awe of little Max faces all over the walls "Maaaa! Maaaaaa!"

Breakfast was the ultimate (frozen) pancakes topped with whipped cream, sprinkles, and 2 candles. Again his smile made you feel like a million dollar parent. I thought to myself why do I not do this every morning, he's so happy!

When we began singing happy birthday to him he looked at us with a closed mouth smile and then put his head down all shyly, it was dang adorable. We loved it. Maxson ate all 3 pancakes with no complaint or coaxing (woah, that's not normal. Usually he eats half of 1 and the rest ends on the floor).

Max helped me make his cake.

We took some pictures of the babies and Max upstairs and Max showed me how he can climb almost out of his bed to turn on the lights

I tried getting a cute picture of Max with his monkey but it was a no go, they were all blurry because he moves so much. I contained kept Max in his crib with food while I took pictures of the babies. 

Then came lasagna with a candle on it for lunch

Then came nap time. I finished up wrapping his presents in the basement and got a little bit of dinner ready.

Soon after naps I was in the process of watering down the juice Max wanted (hello, that's not new, kid). Well epic tantrum of all tantrums ensued for 1 whole hour and continued to escalate for various reasons because of baths, monkeys not allowed in baths, mom going downstairs, diaper changes, having to put a diaper back on because he wouldn't get in the bath. I've never lost my patience more with that child than I did in that hour, sadly.

Somehow I got him calmed down. Dad finally came home. We ate dinner, mac n cheese for the birthday boy because he never gets it at our house but inhales it at other people's houses. As soon as dinner was over we opened presents! Giving presents to a 2 year old has to be one of the best feelings in the whole world. His face LIT up with each gift, so excited over every little thing. Oh how I love that child.

 The Dr. Drill n Fill set (a play dough dentist set) was by far his most favorite thing. He and Casey have played hours on it since. It's pretty adorable. Casey unknowingly would use huge dental words to try and teach Maxson what he was doing, stinking cute.

And lastly, CAKE!!!!! Our friends next door came over and joined us on this part, they brought over a mylar balloon which Max is still obsessed with and a sweet new hot wheels car. Again, when we sang happy birthday to him he got all shy, turned around and put his head in the wall, so cute. He did a great job on blowing out the candles all day and it was so cute to watch. I put M&M's on the top because he's obsessed with them.

Max, Julie, and Grace enjoying (only the frosting on their) cake.

It was such a fun birthday. It was great to do special things just for Maxson because it was his birthday. I was surprised that it was the day that he caught on to repeating that he was "TDDDOOOOO!" when asks how old he was. He would also hold up one finger and then look at it and try to figure out how to get one more finger up but it ended up all fingers would come up and he just couldn't do it out, so darling.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAXSON!

cake for one

we were so lucky to have casey's family in town for maxson's birthday over thanksgiving! since everyone had to leave on sunday to get back, we celebrated his birthday with family on saturday. i wish we could celebrate all birthdays with family around because it's so darn fun. they made it really special for us and showed maxson some extra special love on his birthday party day. plus family members are great helpers when it comes to getting the place decorated and taking pictures so i get to be in some!

i made a tiny oreo cake for max, which he devoured.

messy?

not so much, he just picked pieces off to eat and they went straight in his mouth.

after he ate his little cake he ate a sweet potato, peas, and meat.

he just kept eating and eating and eating.
(yes we fed him cake first because my awesome cousin, clara, said the best "cake smashes" came when given cake before dinner because then they're super interested in it. sure enough he dug straight in;)

for his actual birthday we served him the rest of the cake for all 3 meals.
 i kid i kid.
i did however put a cake on the meals i served him (breakfast and dinner).
by dinner time he was being super brave and trying to touch the flame, ha
we gave him pudding for his dinner dessert and he was THRILLED.
that one was messy.
but so adorably worth it, the whole time he was making nom nom nom sounds
we also remembered to do a birthday spanking train sans spanking.

maxson went through our legs on his new little car and loved it

to end the night we let him hold our phones most the night as a birthday present and i'm pretty sure that was his favorite thing of all weekend, even more than the food.
he just walked from one end of the house to the other with the phone in his hand, smiling, head bobbing, running to grin at us. he was so happy
and then he began putting the phone in his mouth and we took it away and it was tears until bedtime.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAXSON!

***

i'll be the first to admit that i'm not great at party details.

i kept it simple and very random, ha.

we put up streamers all around the house like we always do for birthdays.

i also saw a special at walgreens that week for 50 free prints and thus printed out 50 photos of maxson's face (just four different shots) i cut out that silhouette and put them all over the house so we had little maxson's face staring at us happily from all sides.

it was really funny.

i made a little fringe garland out of tablecloth, threw that on the wall along with some balloons, and spray painted a dollar store happy birthday sign black and called it good!

festive it was.