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Just another stay at home mom trying to do it all, save the world, and not run out of coffee.
My published articles: exm.nr/gkA1yp
Twitter: @CarolBruckmann

Monday, January 10, 2011

2010 Flashback - Caitlyn and Elijah's birthday party


When your family all live out of town and your children's birthdays are a few weeks apart, I think it's a bit much to expect people to come to both parties. So the goal is to find creative party ideas and themes that will let us squish both parties into one day. This year I needed something that would make a great smash cake for Elijah, so we went with a princess and the frog theme! I can't take credit for the cakes, that was my sorority sister Angela, but I was thrilled to pull off the cupcakes at least!

It was actually a crazy day. It turned out that my mom's parents both ended up in the hospital, so only my immediate family and Jamie's parents were there as far as family. Thankfully we had invited some friends as well as some of Caitlyn's friends from when she was in daycare. We purchased a $30 blowup pool from BJs for entertainment, and I stayed up all night filling up water balloons (and cleaning my house... let's be honest). The party was a blast, but the thing Caitlyn remembers most is everyone yelling for Elijah to "destroy the cake!"




In order to make their actual birthdays special we took Elijah to the mall on his real birthday to ride the train and carousel. I made what I thought were his favorite foods - fettuccine alfredo, applesauce, and vanilla ice cream. On Caitlyn's real birthday she woke up to a dollhouse in her room! After church our neighbor came over for lunch and playtime, and at dinner we ate on the fancy china. (Hey, when else am I going to pull it out?) She chose the menu - pigs in a blanket and macaroni & cheese. When I insisted on a vegetable or salad course she chose clementine oranges.

Hopefully I won't run out of themes before they hit the "slumber party" age!


More pictures can be seen by clicking here.



Thursday, January 6, 2011

Feliz Navidad - parte una



We thought we had a lot packed for our cross country Christmas campaign until we saw this truck.  ------------------->

They packed everything but the... umm, well, I guess they packed everything.




Anyway, the first leg of our trip was to my hometown of Roxboro, NC. Christmas Eve was spent bringing people to tears with my recreation of my Grandma Edna's fruit cocktail cake and having four perfectly good gifts stolen from me during the white elephant game. (The gift I finally won will be re-wrapped and put back into play next year, as usual.) Since the rest of my fam got in so late we decided to just open our Christmas pjs and go to bed to await Santa. Somehow the next morning I manage to entertain my niece until everyone else drug themselves out of bed. Elijah didn't quite figure out how to eat the orange in his Christmas stocking, but everyone seemed thrilled with their stash otherwise.




After everything was neatly piled to the side we headed over to my Granddaddy Harold's for our yearly brunch. (It used to be a breakfast, and still is for those not in my immediate family.) The gift given to most acclaim was a gift from my Aunt Jackie and Uncle Dennis to Elijah - a light-up car that NEVER STOPS!! A piece of tape strategically placed over the speaker made it a much better toy. No one can agree on the lyrics pumping from the car stereo - any ideas?



See more pics from the morning by clicking here!

Shalom Seekers