Aaaaannnnndddd...DONE!

FINALLY!! The birthday celebration that has been going on for almost one full month is over! O.V.E.R. OVER!!! I love celebrating birthdays, especially those of my kids, but man was I ready for this one to be done.


Payton's bday is in late April. We celebrated by taking him to Kalahari. Then we had a group birthday party with a few friends. But we had to hold off on his family birthday party because of Matt's work schedule. Saturday, we finally had his long awaited and long planned birthday party.


Since January, he's been telling me he wanted a Mario Brothers' birthday party. While the games are back, the accessories are not. I couldn't find much of anything for a Mario Party. Matt and I made up a few things, but we winged everything.


We arrived in Toledo at my in laws on Friday and got settled in and I left right away to go do the shopping required to feed and house 30-35 people. We had decided on pizza, bread sticks, a few snacks and "piranha plant salad". Basically, I took a spinach-strawberry salad and we put some painted paper tubes in the middle with printed piranha plants coming out of the tubes in the middle of the salad. Everyone seemed to enjoy the food seeing as we ran out of pizza and I had to make more salad.


We also had a "Yoshi Egg Hunt". I purchased some Easter eggs on clearance and we painted white dots on them. We stuffed them with candy and put them in the backyard for the kids to find. We were expecting 8-10 kids and ended up with only 5, but they were plenty happy with the extra eggs.


For the cake, I made 18 star cupcakes and Payton had asked for a chocolate cake also. I made a cute "1 UP mushroom" that we turned into a 5 UP mushroom. Not my best cake, but it came out cute and it was gone, so it must have tasted as good as it looked!


I had a great time planning the birthday party, as I always do, but I'm relieved to know that I don't have to start planning another one for 6 months! WHEW!


Also, Matt and I got strep throat last week and we've finally recovered from that. Maxwell had double ear infections, but he's feeling much better too. Tomorrow, we will resume our normal gym-school-work-clean lives until we head *back* to Ohio on Friday for the holiday weekend.