best laid plans

I made a small mistake, with the best of intentions.

Instead of 2 birthdays in one week, I ended up celebrating 5 times in one week.

What was I thinking???  Bean and I were supposed to be out of town this past Saturday, so we celebrated Lily's birthday with a handful of people a week early.  Even though it was a small celebration, I still wanted it to be special for her.  She has enough cousins to constitute a decent-sized birthday party, so of course we needed snacks and decorations.  (turned out we weren't out of town, so we could have streamlined more, but the change in plans came too late)

Miss Rose's actual birthday was Wednesday.  She wanted it to be a special day, but she really had no idea what she wanted.  It was a school day, a work day for me and a 12-hour workday for Bean.  Which didn't leave us with a lot of options.  I made cupcakes the night before and we brought them to school that morning.  She chose to have pizza and frozen yogurt that night--it was just me and the little girls and there is a story of how the night was almost a disaster, but I'll save that for another time.  You may need to remind me though, if you are curious.

Then, Lily's actual birthday was Friday.  It was a pretty basic day.  Sometimes on the weekends, when Bean and my brother-in-law are working, my sister-in-law and I get together for dinner.  We spend much of the evening breaking up arguments, telling kids to share, feeding picky kids and cleaning up their messes--we have 7 between us.  But at least we get to have snippets of adult conversation in the middle of the chaos, which is a nice break from being alone in the chaos.

I picked up a cookie cake from the grocery store (if you have Albertson's, they make really good cookie-cakes--large pizza sized cookies that are soft and delicious).  We ate pizza (I know, we are eating a lot of that lately) and sang before we ate the cookie.

Then, on Saturday I took Miss Rose, her cousin and best-neighbor-friend and Gracie to Boomer's--a local place with miniature golf, go-karts, bumper boats and an arcade.  She'd never been before and that's what she wanted for her "party."  It was fun, but exhausting too.  Gracie was moody and spent more time running around the golf course.  Miss Rose got hit in the head with a golf club at one point.  The girls had a great time, although true to form Miss Rose found a few reasons to melt down at the end.

Oh wait, we're not done yet!  Saturday night we had family over for Miss Rose's birthday.  As if the rest of it wasn't enough.  Some of our family was sick, so it was my parents and bro & sis-in-law and their 4 kids.  It was just what Miss Rose needed though, to complete her birthday fun.

It was overload though, of the best intentions.

This celebrating two birthdays that come in two days, is quite a challenge.  I want to make their birthdays  special and unique.  I don't want them to feel like their birthday was lost in the mix.  Oh, and this year it was real fun to help Gracie understand why it wasn't her birthday too.

Maybe I over-did it just a bit.  This is only my second year balancing these two birthdays.  So I learned what not to do.  Last year, Lily didn't understand birthdays yet, so it was a bit easier.

I'm already thinking about what to do next year.  We may just do a huge double birthday at the park.  We'll go Gosselin style and sing twice, once to each girl to make it special.  That way family only has to come to one event and I'm done in one shot.

And have I mentioned that Bean's birthday is in two weeks?  And Valentine's Day.

We don't do things the easy way around here.

Stay tuned later for a photo post of all the fun!