the birthday party!

Sometime around 3 or 4 weeks ago I lost my mind and decided to invite a bunch of people over to celebrate Rowan's birthday.  Let me admit right now that I did it to avoid future guilt.  We had a big party for Fletcher's first birthday and I was frankly afraid that one day Rowan would see the pictures and go into some little girl tirade about how she didn't get one.  Not that I would ever raise my children to guilt me or have tirades, but JUST IN CASE.  Besides, parties are fun!  People love parties!  Free food and drink and you don't have to do the dishes!  Parties are the best. 

My dad and Fletcher blew up a gazillion balloons.  They were beloved by all children.

I strung up the pennant banner my friend, Kelly, made just for Rowan's party.  She made it!  It turned out so awesome and now I have something so cute to hang in Rowan's room.  THANK YOU, KELLY!!!

See?  She even put cute owls on them.  I love cute owls.  I also made a photo garland of pictures from each month of Rowan's life thus far.  

And then since the cupcakes weren't really decorated (besides the sprinkles) my mom printed out these cute pictures of birds and I glued them to drink stirrers to stick into the cupcakes.  The white and chocolate cupcakes, as you may remember.  I know some of you are dying to know how they were, and I can now proudly say they were perfectly adequate.  And that's about as much of a ringing endorsement as I can give them.

And then after all the place was festooned, I went to work on my daughter.  I had planned for her to wear a cute summer outfit that I had worn as a baby, but the weather decided to be cold, rainy, and just all around crappy.  I'm pretty sure it was because I keep calling Mother Nature a bitch.  I'll be sure to butter her up before our next party.  So I had to improvise and add leggingings and a long sleeve onesie.

She may have gotten a little too much in the party spirit.

And then we did what all responsible adults do to their one year olds- we stuck a cupcake in front of her with a lit candle!  She was pretty confused. 

So we blew it out for her and waited for her to eat it.  She was still pretty confused.  So we said: here, try some, you'll like it!  And commenced shoving some into her mouth.



And she said: No, I don't think I like it!



And we said: Sure you do!  Let's shove some more in there!

And then she finally agreed and went to town on that "white" cupcake!

And then we ate, drank and were merry!  And we (and by "we" I mean Brian) let the kids use a bunch of silly string all over the house.  As I type this it is still on my ceiling in the living room.



You can see it all over the floor in the picture above.  The kids loooooved it.  I thought I was going to have a stroke.  And at the end of the night, we found out that real men wear party hats.



Please excuse the crappy pictures. It was dark in the house because Mother Nature was being a bitch.  Whoops!