A Royal Celebration

Our kids have birthdays 3 weeks apart. So springtime is birthday season in our house!  Luckily they still want to have birthday parties together (which makes it SO much easier on mama and our families!) the only hard part is coming up with a theme that is gender neutral and easy to do! This year, Layla is ALL about princesses. ALL of the time. Brady doesn't mind watching Princess Sophia but he is not a princess lover himself. So I thought why not go with a royal theme? Princesses and knights. 

I took the kids to Garden of the Gods to take some royal pictures for the party and Layla embraced it whole heartedly. She was making quite a scene and some people even stopped to watch our "photo shoot". It cracked me up!

Brady, the fierce knight!

We had so many people come from out of town to help us celebrate and for that, we are ever so grateful. This is Brady and Layla with both sets of grandparents who came from Minnesota. They are so, so blessed to have such wonderful, loving, interactive, fun grandparents. 

Brian's Aunt Judy and his Grandpa, Alan (Brady and Layla's great grandpa) traveled from Cincinnati, Ohio to come be a part of the celebrations.

And last but not least, Brian's sister traveled from Fargo (and had to deal with all sorts of flying issues with Frontier) to come help us celebrate too!

The first couple of days they were here we had bbqs, toured around the Academy, played games, and enjoyed each others company.

And then, well, things went a little south. See, earlier in the week Layla threw up in her bed at naptime. She had just eaten a Sonic ice cream cone not long before so I figured she had food poisoning. She threw up a couple of times, I treated her with oils, and she was literally back on her feet playing and eating like nothing had happened.

Fast forward to Friday night right before Brian's sister arrives. We were doing some party prep and I started feeling a little queasy and figured it was just nerves for the party tomorrow and being tired. Oh no, that fun episode Layla had earlier in the week? Definitely a stomach virus. And I was up all night with it.  

Thank God for our family. They stepped up and seriously did all of the prep work for the party for me. I had 65 people coming and was freaking out a little how I was going to get it all done! I got about an hour of sleep (if that), was so weak and could barely stand for more than a minute, had aches and chills, and just felt horrible. And I felt even worse that everyone was working so hard when that should have been my job. I am so, so grateful for them. 

Finally, I took more oils, took a shower, and started to feel somewhat human again. I was debating what to do but really didn't want to miss their party.  I figured I would just keep a safe distance from everyone and just try and do as much as I could.

We had the party at our development's rec center. They have a room with a kitchen and they have a large covered pool. We raced to get everything decorated and set up before guests started to arrive.

Girl favors included a princess cup, a magic wand, a tiara, princess coloring crayons, and a princess rubber ducky.

Boy favors included a knight cup, knight tattoos, knight crayons, and a knight rubber ducky.

I got little bunditinis from Nothing Bundt Cakes and put them in a castle cupacke holder. If you've never had Nothing Bundt cakes, you need to try them. They're delish.

Brady's cake was all chocolate for my chocolate lover.

And Layla's cake was all vanilla for my vanilla lover.

The Royal menu! My mother in law has the most beautiful handwriting!

Food!

Now some pictures from the party:

I'm not sure where the fire hat/crown came in but he went with it the whole party!

We had two pinatas, a princess crown and a dragon but I didn't get a picture of that one.

The family all together!

We headed home and opened the mass amounts of gifts.

And literally 1 minute after finishing opening presents Brady announced he didn't feel well and threw up all over the floor. Talk about a way to end a birthday party!

From there I was up almost all night with him, my mom caught it, and then my father in law and my dad caught it after they got home. Praise the Lord that none of our guests got sick and that no one else in the family was sick. :(

Another special part of the weekend was that it was also Grandpa's birthday too! He turned 89 the day after the party and we were so happy to be able to celebrate it with him.

He got a yummy cupcake for dessert..

and Layla ate the majority of it!

Nana and Layla

So while it was a wonderful weekend in that we got to see everyone, got to celebrate birthdays, and have some fun, it was frustrating that we got the stomach virus (I mean it's May! I thought we were spared this year but of course not!) and weren't able to do most of the things we had planned. I swear family, we're not trying to kill you with our sicknesses!