Happy Birthday, Jesus Party!

Today was Parker's 1st annual Happy Birthday, Jesus Party (I may be rethinking the "annual" part at this very moment)! The kids seemed to have a good time and I even got some smiles out of the adults even though I sent all of their kids home covered in paint. Whoops. You see, I have this problem. I have beautifully, grand ideas. The kids were all going to sit in their booster seats, paint beautiful plastic ornament balls, sit around the fireplace and listen to the pop up book version of the birth of Jesus, eat grilled cheese sandwiches cut into gingerbread men and Christmas trees and top the party off with cupcakes and singing Happy Birthday to Jesus!

Yeah. It didn't really happen that way. haha. Bless my heart... one day I'll stop fantasizing that toddlers will ever sit still for a book reading, paint an ornament instead of themselves and care that their sandwiches are cut with cookie cutters. Oh well! The party was a bit more stressful than I had originally planned but the kids had a good time and none of the messes were so bad that they couldn't be cleaned with a magic eraser and some detergent! Overall, we'll consider it a success!

All the kids (Ana, Brooklyn, Piper, Logan and Parker) plus Tara.

Brooklyn, Piper and Logan painting their ornaments

Logan and Parker painting

LUNCH! We forwent gingerbread men shaped grilled cheese sandwiches for the ease of microwave dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets, apple slices, tots and pretzels.

Parker kept trying to put the pretzel on his nose. Silly boy.

Happy Birthday, Jesus!!! I hope you like funfetti!

Getting ready to "blow" out the candle. In actuality, he grabbed the flame. Whoops. Thankfully, he said "hot" and didn't do it again. Lesson learned.

Logan's mom helping him blow out his candle. He spit apples onto his cupcake when he tried to blow and I thought it was pretty stinkin' cute.

Heaven forbid we get our fingers dirty.

Oh Parker Wise.... you melt my heart.

As much as I joke, this WILL be an annual event. It's important to Daniel and I to raise our children with the understanding of what Christmas really means and to make it fun! We've opted as a family to not do "santa" as any more than a fun Christmas character in attempts to not let the fun of santa overshadow the real gift of Christmas. I pray each year as we continue to make this a tradition that as the children grow, as does their understanding of why we're doing this. Some of the kids could say "Happy Birthday Jesus" which was precious but I really hope next year, they'll have the attention spans to listen to a quick Children's version of the Christmas story. It will be so fun each year to watch them not only grow physically, but also spiritually in their knowledge of Christ and the meaning of Christmas.

I think each night from now until Christmas, we're going to sing Happy Birthday to Jesus with the 24 cupcakes I STILL have from this party! Practice makes perfect, right?!