Jack's birthday party/Halloween

This has been such a hectic month that it's been hard for me to keep up with everything that is going on. I realize that I never even posted about Jack's birthday party and our Halloween - back in October! - so we may as well start there. This year, Jack specifically requested an Angry Birds party. He asked enough in advance that I was able to plan some fun decorations, although I didn't end up doing everything that I wanted to do since I was mostly just too lazy.

We had some fun balloon Angry Birds, and I decorated the gift bags to look like Angry Birds. Jack also asked for a pinata, which we've never had at his birthday parties before. I accommodated him this year, because I found a fun idea to make the pinata into one of the green pigs. But I am saying it right here for everyone to see - I will NEVER have a pinata again. I don't like them on principle anyway. Every other day, we tell our kids not to hit. But with a pinata, not only do we tell them that it's ok to hit, but we encourage them to hit something really hard. With a stick. And if they hit it hard enough, they get candy.

At Jack's party this year, we spent the entire pinata whacking time trying to make sure that no little kids got hit along with the pinata. And at the end of it, half the kids ended up crying because they didn't get the candy they wanted. That was probably my fault for not buying enough candy or a big enough pinata, but it was seriously not worth the trouble.

I had delusions of making a cool Angry Birds cake for Jack, because there are bakers out there who do some seriously impressive things with fondant frosting. But, again, too lazy. I do, however, like to make my birthday cakes a little different than the standard birthday party fare. Usually I make filled cupcakes, but that has been a hassle the last several years. So this year, we made ice cream cakes, which I think were fun for the kiddos. A nice plus is that you can make them a few days ahead of time and just freeze them until the day of the party.

My favorite thing about the party and Halloween was our costumes. Jack wanted to be the yellow Angry Bird, so I figured we might as well dress the whole family up while Violet is still too little to have an opinion. I had her be the blue bird, I was the white bird, and Tom dressed up as a pig (the Grandpa pig, to be exact). I am very fortunate to have a friend who is an amazing seamstress, and she made all our costumes. If I were to have bought those costumes at the store, they would have cost me anywhere between $30 and $50 EACH. With her help, I spent less than $20 for the four of us, and they turned out so much better than the store-bought ones.

Jack received some awesome gifts for his birthday. It was so gratifying to see how excited and truly thankful he was for his presents. We have wonderful friends and family who were so thoughtful and generous. We are so blessed.

On Halloween, we went over to our friends' house to go trick-or-treating. Violet still didn't quite understand the whole concept, but it was a lot of fun. Jack's dentist has a cool program where she will buy back Halloween candy from her patients at a dollar a pound and then send them to Marines who are deployed overseas. Together, Jack and Violet collected more than five pounds of candy (surreptitiously supplemented by recent pinata offerings). Jack was very excited to collect his five dollar bills. I was very excited to get all that candy out of my house.

I feel that Halloween and Jack's birthday always mark the beginning of the holiday season, and we are now right in the thick of it. I'm going to try to keep up, but it seems the bigger the kids get, the more there is to do. But I wouldn't have it any other way.