This past week, my mother visited, along with my brother and his fam. We had a FANTASTIC week! We went to the beach, swam, and had lots of fun adventures together. I wanted this week to be extra special for the kids. He has two sweet kiddos who we don’t get to see very often. In fact, we are never together for the holidays or birthdays, so I decided to throw them….A Year of Holidays Party! Oh, because I’m the coolest mom and aunt in the world. That’s why.
I planned only the bigger holidays. I didn’t bother with President’s Day and that kind of thing (and I don’t think they missed them one bit). We started with Valentine’s Day. The kids got to choose names for the exchange and then got to work making their Valentines. And they turned out super cute! Plus, what kid doesn’t love making something with glitter?
The next holiday we celebrated was Easter. The kids hunted to find eggs that jingled when they shook them (money!) and they had a great time finding them. You might notice as we go along that there are only pictures of my kids and not my brother’s. You’re right! They won’t be on here, but I can assure you that they are cute and sweet as pie.
Moving on…to the 4th of July! I thought the best way to celebrate this would be to have our very own parade through the Whimsical Garden. The kids got instruments and red, white, and blue decorations and flags and marched around the garden 4 or 5 times while my brother sang/hummed the “Marine’s Hymn.” It was definitely a good time. They all loved it.
Do you feel a chill in the air? Well that’s because Halloween is here! The neighborhood was enchanted by these precious kiddos running from driveway to driveway in search of candy, all dressed up in their exciting costumes. Chloe was a mermaid (I made her costume. I’ll share it with you this week!), Willow was a princess, Laelia was herself (she’s a baby doll anyway), Boy (of my brother) was a doctor, and Girl (of my brother) was a princess. I was going to have neighbors give them candy, but it was tough to arrange with schedules, so my mom, brother (we’ll just call him Kevin from here on out because that’s his name), and sis-in-law (Karen) stood at the ends of driveways and passed out the candy.
When we came back it was almost time for Thanksgiving…we were out for a while (hee hee). But Thanksgiving dinner wasn’t quite ready for us so we took a swim while Nana worked on dinner. And it was yummy! I know my super cool party might sound silly to some, but this was such a fun thing to do. And while we were in the middle of each “holiday” it really felt like we were celebrating the day together…even though it was just for a moment.
Next, was the holiday everyone waited for so impatiently…Christmas! I did tell them that they had to go to bed so they could wake up and it would be Christmas morning. They didn’t buy it. So instead we read the Christmas Story together and then we caroled our way into Chloe and Willow’s room. Because that is where Christmas was.
First we began by decorating the tree.
Then we gathered on the floor to open gifts. Nana brought a gift for everyone.
You might think it’s over, as we are at the end of the year, but I thought what better way to wrap it up than to have a giant BIRTHDAY PARTY! So we did.
We had a pinata, which we had to whack quickly since a storm was rolling in. No problem there! They took that thing out pretty fast.
Next we opened gifts…
And finally we had cake! Rainbow cake. We sang Happy Birthday and then they each blew out their candle and decorated their cake.
Phew! Well, I know why I was tired after this party. 6 holidays and 1 birthday party in 4 hours! I think I slept well that night. I like parties a lot and I’m pretty sure this was my most favorite party so far…and the kids said so too!
