Fall Party at the Farm

This weekend it was time again for our friends' party at their farm about 30 minutes south of town. Each year it gets a bit easier to take the kids, although going to parties with the kids is never really a sit down and relax kind of thing. We all managed to eat - the kids mostly had cookies, brownies, cupcakes, and juice boxes. Oh, and 1 carrot and blueberry each. We enjoyed pork BBQ and bluegrass music.

Lucas got the idea to stick glow sticks in his hat

Was hoping to get a dark picture with just glowsticks glowing, but forgot my flash was on.

Just for fun, here is a link to the blog post about the party in 2011. I know we went in 2010 and 2012, but I can't find blog posts for those years.

http://babiescubed.blogspot.com/2011/10/bbq-at-farm.html

Party #2

We went to party #2 tonight. Once again, the kids did pretty well, but it was a bit more tiring for us to keep track of them. It was a house we hadn't been to before, so they were clingy, and yet they wanted to explore. We had to make sure we knew where all the bathrooms and the food were, and we had to keep them from eating all the cookies on the trays that were scattered about at kid level.

As we were trying to get them ready, this is what they wanted to wear:

This is what we managed to get them to wear. Ironically, when we got there, there were several older girls wearing cute tu-tus and other frilly things, so our kids would have fit right in with their leotards, tu-tus, and fairy costumes. Oh well.

We had to drag them out after they kept trying to un-decorate the Christmas tree and had eaten about a million cookies (and barely any dinner) and were taking out every toy in the house. This is Abby's tantrum in the car when we made her leave the party:

We realized that each of us thought the other one had made sure that Abby had eaten dinner. Turns out she had only eaten a few bites of cookie. No wonder she was a mess!

I guess since Jason and I each managed to eat and drink a little we should consider the party a success. Plus everyone stayed dry in their undies (even Lucas!) and nobody broke anything or stuck their hands in a burning candle. That's about the best we could ask for, I suppose.

Party #1

Last Sunday we went to a holiday party at a friend's house. We were able to convince the kids to dress up in nice outfits, which takes quite a bit of clever maneuvering and offering of "choices" these days.

The kids at yummy food, primarily by reaching up on the table to get it. Here's Lucas practicing the "balancing a plate while eating" party trick.

The kids helped decorate gingerbread houses with the other children there. They did a great job! Maybe they didn't realize the candy was edible, but they didn't try to eat anything, and they really focused on putting the decorations on the houses. 

So we'd call the first party of the season a success! Only a few more to go...

Cinco de Mayo

This month marks the one year anniversary of us buying and moving into this house. We haven't entertained much since we moved in (the reasons for that should be obvious), and we decided that Cinco de Mayo was as good a time as any to have a party. Most of our guests were Jason's coworkers, with a nice mix of my friends and coworkers too. Thankfully, my parents were willing to come over and help wrangle the kids so that we could entertain and socialize.

The kids helped us clean to get ready for the party

5 Crock pots of Carnitas. We spent Friday night chopping the toppings, and Saturday morning loading up the crocks. We had to endure a lot of whining and screaming in the house while we were occupied with cooking (hands covered in raw pork do not mix well with the need for time outs), but it was worth it.

Zoey enjoyed waking Lucas up from nap

The kids really did great throughout - they loved seeing all the other kids and babies

The kids enjoyed eating on the screened porch, and taking food off the dining room table.

They're getting so big!!

A little mom and Lucas time

After the party Lucas was using his chalkboard while we were putting away leftovers, and he came upstairs with a blue face. oops.

The next day there was a lot to clean up

Zoey helped quite a bit. (She really did! She grabbed a wet cloth and helped wipe up spills on the floor)


Whew! Overall it was a really fun party and we're glad we did it. Hopefully we can have more gatherings this summer...maybe a little smaller than this one and with fewer leftovers, though.