Still busy busy busy

When I said I'd post more pictures of E's birthday party as soon as I got through my busy week I wasn't expected the busy week to turn into busy weeks.

Days after the party I had to go to Saint Louis for a work meeting for a couple days. At that meeting we decided on what everyone needed to do before the next draft of our materials needed to be pulled together. What we pretty much decided was that it was all going to end up in my lap within days of getting home from MO. Needless to say work has kept me busy this past week since the deadline to get things to the printer is tomorrow.

I got to take a little break from work to put on a primary (the kid's Sunday school at church) activity at my house Saturday. I'm not going to lie, it was very lively in my house for that 2 hours, but it was fun. We had a little family reunion-- played some games, make family trees and then decorated cupcakes to look like a member of our family tree. I made a few right before the activity started. They aren't my finest work, but it was a nice creative release right before the excitement started.

So now that I've rambled on about why I was too busy to blog, I'll finally post some pictures of the party (sorry they are the same ones on Amy's blog, for those of you who are her fans). Thanks to Ian for being our photographer. Some more pics are on their way. At some point I'll load them all onto my computer and put a little slide show together on my side bar. Until then, this will do.

The birthday boysI was really excited about this party because it was the first time my vision honestly and fully came to life. I had so much fun dreaming it up and making it happen. The living room was outdoor Paris with a city scape, a couple bistros to sit and eat at and some trees and clouds.

The breakfast nook is where we kept all the little chefs (decked out in aprons and chefs hats) busy playing in a bunch of play kitchens I borrowed. We also had pin the hat over Remmy and had the kids count all the little rats that I had hidden around the house. The kitchen was the kitchen of Gusteau's and the dinning room was the dinning of Gusteau's.
We had a fun little "French" buffet because you can't have a Ratatouille party without fine food. By french I pretty much mean we had normal 2-year-old food and labeled everything with their names in French. We had gold fish, grapes, pears, eclairs (thanks Amy), crackers and bread, cheese for the kids, cheese for the adults (Br and I had a really fun date the night before at Central Market picking out fine cheeses and bread), french lemonade, and Perrier.

This is the adult's cake. I learned a few lessons making it. The main one was that if you just sort of wing making sugar paste you will be dealing with something much to soft to hold a shape and so your little rat friend will not look like what you want him to and then will sort of sink into himself as the day goes on. I should have kept the Remmy I made for Br's birthday. Oh well, lesson learned.

The kids got cupcakes and E and Liam got their own Eiffel tower cakes so they didn't have to fight over who got to blow out the candles.

Everyone who came submitted some really fun kid friendly recipes so that we could put together a little cook book. Thanks to Amy for making the cutest/classiest gift bags ever for us to put all the fun take home stuff in!

Thank you again Br, Amy, Ian, and Mom for helping pull this off. I had the time of my life doing it and couldn't have done it without you all!

Busy celebrating

So this post is going to be a little lame but I promise at the conclusion of this upcoming busy week I'll sit down and type up a quality post. The last week or so has been busy with celebrating so at least it was fun chaos.

Wed was our little man E's birthday. I was really excited to send some birthday treats (cupcakes decorated to look like his favorite treat crockcorn-- by the way I love the way he says "popcorn") with him to preschool. He was really excited to be bringing treats too. It made me happy that he was so happy.

E showed that he was ready to be one year older. In fact earlier this week he was cracking me up when I turned to see him sitting on the couch reading the cliff's notes for the Grapes of Wrath. The TV was on but he was honestly focusing on his "book". The kid carried it around with him and periodically stopped to read for over an hour. Granted he was only reading the cliff's notes and not the actual book, I'm still going to give him props since I'm pretty sure that I never actually read more than that either.

On to the end of the week. Grandma Tori arrived in town for our big birthday party Saturday. Br picked the theme of Ratatouille because it is one of his and E's favorite movies. I'll post more about the party later with some actual pictures but let me say it was really really fun to plan and attend. What made it more fun was that we joined forces with Amy, Ian and Liam so we could celebrate Liam's 2nd birthday as well. Thank you to them, my mom, and Brad for helping make it happen!