Party Animals

It's July!  July is a big birthday month around here, with Bridget's birthday falling on the 11th, and now Mary on the 25th.  (And then there's me on the 15th, but who's counting my birthdays anymore?  Now that I'm 35!!! We won't be counting any more years after this!)  Much like the other three girls sharing March, I love that Bridget and Mary share July.  And, if I'm being really honest, it means we can combine birthday celebrations, concentrate the chaos, and relax a little for those other ten months!  Plus, who doesn't want a birthday buddy?

This is the most recent picture I have of our two little July girls, with their favorite guy:

We got our big July birthday bash started with a cute farm theme.  (Since Mary had a little lamb, you know.)  Luckily, Bridget loved this idea, and she loved the extra bonus of a farm bounce house even more! It's easy to justify springing for something like this when we're celebrating two birthdays at once ;)  This extremely large inflatable farm with a slide inside was the first thing to arrive on the day of the party, and the girls got jumping right away.  We needed all the help we could get in the way of child entertainment at that point.  I am always down to the wire before guests arrive, and this party was no exception.  While the girls bounced, Matt and I were setting up for over 50 people.  Yikes!

This is one of Matt's little projects before every party.  He prints out pictures of the girls on each of their birthdays, and tapes them up on the wall.  Mary's birthday timeline is on top, and Bridget's is on the bottom.  I love it, and of course, these pictures are still up on the wall :)

As for pictures during the party, I got a few between managing the kitchen and making sure I wasn't neglecting Mary too much, so we're thankful we live next door to a wonderful photographer who always has his camera at the ready.  He is the quickest photographer, too.  He emailed me this slideshow of his pictures before we'd even finished cleaning up after the party! He got much better shots, including one of me and Sara holding Tessa and Annie.  We have surprisingly few twins with twins pictures :)

Obviously, the most anticipated part of the party was cake time!  We  had lots of sweaty kids fresh from the bounce house eager to eat some of the barn that I had so lovingly sloppily created.  This cake, along with as much prep work as I could do ahead of time, kept me up until 4am.  (It took a full 24 hours to feel the effect of that loss of sleep, but when it hit me, it hit me hard.  I guess 35-year-olds shouldn't try to pull all-nighters.)  That barn is indeed very close to sliding right off the farm.  If Bridget  had blown her candles out a little more fiercely, we would have had a cake-slide on our hands.

Mary had one little candle to blow out, too!  But, amid the chaos of a large crowd all wanting a piece of some 4am farm cake, we neglected to even put Mary in her high chair for a bite of cake.  First birthday party fail!  I'll claim that as an intentional delay for the real deal, since she turns one tomorrow, officially.  She can dive into some cake then, and you can bet I'll get a good picture of it!

Meanwhile, Bridget told me that she liked the way the cake looked, but she didn't want any.  She opted for the "B" brownie that Aunt Stacy brought.  I'm just now realizing that neither birthday girl ate the cake I stayed up so late making.  Hmmm.

Before we all headed outside to the pinata, Bridget got a little upside-down time from Uncle Kyle :)

Kids were occupied for a few minutes decorating their own pinata loot bags with some cute farm stickers.  Then it was time for everyone to take their turn bashing the pinata.

What a great time we had!  I love that all of our girls have birthday buddies, and now we won't have to worry about another birthday bash for several more months ;)