Ambling Rileys: Easter Birthday Party

Having boys born ten days (and three years) apart can be a blessing and a curse for the birthday party department. Being that this is the first year to celebrate birthdays of both boys, I decided to take the easy (??) way out and do a double party. I debated this back and forth in my head, including tons of mom-guilt, but in the end I knew this was best for our family and our guests. I was fine with the decision until the day before the party when Andrew told me he wanted his own party, and not a "share birthday". Ugh! Cue the Mom guilt again! Luckily the party turned out great, Andrew had a blast, and he still gets to celebrate his actual birthday next week.

Once I found out that Benny's birthday was the day before Easter this year, it seemed like a natural fit to do an Easter party. With much help from our awesome family, the party was a huge success. Thank you to Gran Gran and Grandpa Ray, who came over to help Jonathan clean our whole house during the couple days before the party and kept the boys the day before so we could get things done sans kids. Thank you to Gabby for all of her creative ideas and help on the decor and details. She did the boys invites again and they are precious! And thank you to Gabby and Papa for coming over the night before the party to help corral the boys and finish up the details! Overall, I loved how the party turned out, and I love to see how loved the boys are by our family and friends.

Here are some of the details from the day:

We did a brunch, which I totally copied from Matthew's last birthday party. We had breakfast tacos, fruit/granola/yogurt, donut holes (bunny tails), and cupcakes. Everything was quite yummy!

Thanks to Gabby for all her awesome creative touches!

Benny's cupcake!

And of course Andrew's had to be red! I made special red-paper and red icing cupcakes just for him. And luckily the 4 in the package just happened to be red, too.

I was going for springy, colorful cupcakes. Unfortunately my blue looks more like a cloudy day, but overall I think it turned out ok. And Texas in Spring has many cloudy days, so I guess it's realistic!

Gabby felt like the boys needed their own invites. So here is Benjamin's invitation...

And Andrew's!

The party favors. I went a little crazy here. My mom and I took the boys to Party City and I'm pretty sure we bought every small toy in there. I was going to stuff them in eggs for the egg hunt, but then I thought they'd all end up with multiples or none of something. So I put all the small favors in eggs and put them in the treat bags. That way it was still like they got to open the eggs, but everyone got one of everything. We also made special "baby" treat bags for Benny and Chase.

We decided to take a couple pics of the boys before the party and I'm so so glad we did. These are some of my favorite pictures to date of the boys. I love love love them!

This guy was a grouch because he was refusing to nap! But food cheered him right up!

We rented a Bouncy House/Slide combo from a company called Bounce Around Austin and it was a huge hit! The company called and said that they would be really busy on Saturday morning and couldn't get it there by 9:00 am when we had requested, so they brought it over on Friday evening at no extra charge. Andrew loved that! They service was great, and everyone loved bouncing! I would recommend them to anyone!

Love this face!

The only tears! Mom-fail - I gave Andrew's Easter basket to Bronc for the egg hunt. He was super sad, and Bronc was very sweet to trade back with him. Also, how grown-up does he look crying like that? For some reason it looks like such a big-kid gesture to me!

Love this! Teague would find an egg and crack it open and eat the candy right away, paper and all! We found quite a few still-wrapper Starburst with bite marks in them.

Miles was a trusting egg-hunter. He set his basket down and would get an egg and bring it back to the basket!

Matthew was the egg hunt pro! He went out and found a TON of eggs!

Precious Olivia was the only girl at the party! So glad she could come!

Sweet Benny just enjoyed watching

I was not going to do presents at the party. But then, not thinking, I mentioned presents to Andrew at the party. So of course he wouldn't agree to anything else without opening presents. Overall it wasn't a bad experience, but Andrew kind of latched on to the first present and didn't want to do anything except play with that one!

Adorable Chase was there, too!

Bronc was an excellent present-opening-assistant!

What a cutie!

We sang happy birthday to both boys separately, and it worked out well. Andrew sang along, blew out the candle and went right back to the presents. Benny smiled throughout the singing but then you can guess the fate of his cupcake by looking at the pictures...