Peanut's 1st Birthday

Despite the 100 clear pictures I got, you'll never believe that 

there was so much more to the party that I didn't catch.

I should have stood by the front door taking pictures of everyone.

I'm notoriously bad at taking pictures once the party or event is going.

The best part of the party, by far, was seeing all the little ones in costume.

We created Peanut's Pumpkin Patch in the corner of the backyard.

I painted the sign, my dad built the fence, my mom decorated and 

mom and I sewed all pumpkins.

Although she did majority of the work.

In fact, she was whipping out pumpkins so fast that we abandoned our first project and

decided to use these as gift favors.

(The first project is being saved for next year's party)

Every child got to pick a pumpkin and take it home.

Actually there were a handful of people that either didn't see the Please Take One sign or never even made it to that corner of the yard.

I need to get better about directing people or delegating a friend to point things out.

Did I mention there were around 70 people?

Over by the pumpkin patch we had the kids tables.

I drew some shapes on foam and my dad cut masks out of them,

then B's mom attached elastic and I bought those foam stickers for them to 

decorate the masks with.

We had bat, butterfly, super hero and cat masks

as well as little pumpkins on sticks.

We had a kids boo-fet set up with lunch meat and pb&j sandwiches cut out into Halloween shapes.

Thank you grandma for doing that.

Oh and mummy hot dogs.

We put fruit cups in cupcake wrappers for added color.

There were super heroes, princesses, hello kitty, pirates, a transformer

and various animals (real and fictional) roaming around the yard.

Hello Little Cow!

Let's not forget the geisha dog.

The Bird and the Bee!

What more can I say?

I don't think my mom has ever had so many kids at the house at one time.

I believe it was around 20 and a 90% of them were under the age of 4.

Some of the adults even dressed up (besides B & I)

and it was awesome to see all the different groups of friends and family

gathered all together.

Although, like my friend Kelly said, it's almost like your wedding

as you try and make your rounds to welcome everyone but don't really spend much time 

with any of them.

The time just flew by....

and I didn't even get pictures of the food!

The carnitas that B made and the mummy mushroom dip,

the cheeses and the fruit and veggies are all missing here.

Of course, I did get pictures of the cupcake table.

After most everyone was gone,

and the cake had been eaten,

with just some family left,

we decided to open Peanut's presents.

LOADS of presents.

Holy moly.

Thank you everyone!

While we opened presents, Daniel sat and smoked his cigar.

Anyway, can you believe we didn't get a single repeat?

I've taken out a handful of presents and stashed the rest away in the closet.

I'll bring them out over the next couple months and as someone suggested

some of these will be re-wrapped for Christmas.

Peanut spent most of the present-opening picking up pieces of paper and string 

and putting them in his mouth.

The upper left picture is of me telling him to spit it out into my hand.

All these presents and the boys decided to play with the ball they already had.

In their defense, the mound was a little overwhelming and most the toys were still in boxes.

Peanut was really winding down here.

He's sitting on my grandma's lap, next to my mother-in-law.

We didn't have a single meltdown all day.

I was pretty excited about it.

Eventually we put voodoo in charge of watching the presents

(isn't she a good dog?)

and took Peanut home.

It was an amazing day,

we are so lucky to have so many people

to love and support our little Peanut.

Thank you everyone!

Until next year...

and yes, plans are already in motion.

I mean, we didn't get to use up all our ideas this year :)