Milk and Cookies

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*** WARNING*** This is a super long post full of sweet and sugary children! Continue at your own risk!


So, my sweet babies had their very first birthday party this weekend! It's hard to believe they are really one year old- except they are actually 13 months old! ha! Yes, the party was a month late. We rescheduled in March due to them being sick and my Nanny passing away. But, what a beautiful day we had to celebrate a beautiful day for our lovies!
These are the homemade invites... The "Milk and Cookies" theme isn't very prevalent in the stores so I had to be creative.
I used card stock and a bowl to make the cookies, then I "eyeballed" the shape for the glass of milk. Vellum gives it that "milky" look.
All of the important info is on the back of the cookie and under the vellum on the glass of milk.

I attached the 2 pieces with a thin ribbon and popped them in some large envelopes.

Since our babies don't really have other 1 year old playmates... they play with their brothers and sister and their friends, we opted to have a reunion of sorts.

BACK STORY:

Their actual birthday last year came as sort of a surprise to us. It was not planned and according to my plans, I had at least another week to get things prepared. So needless to say, I hadn't really firmed up any arrangements for the other children, but I was in the process of doing that. Suddenly we learned at my weekly routine exam that we were delivering that day, not to go home but directly to the hospital. Again, not in the plan. But with 1 phone call several special people stepped up and my childcare situation was covered in a matter of minutes. And not by strangers either! If you know me, you know I am very, very careful about who I leave my kiddos with. So, my dear Sunday school class stepped up and while the mommies came to comfort me and pray with me and ease my fears, the daddies took over the child care! And I couldn't have been happier with the way it worked out. In fact, during the time of delivery, there were 3 daddies at my house fixing dinner for my 3 children as well as 4 others (their own.)

Just in case you are curious, that made 7 children ages 4 and under!! Ha!
So, for their birthday, we decided it would be great to invite all of the people who were at their birth or made it less stressful for us by caring their our little ones at home. Everyone except 1 family was able to make it! And what a beautiful day we had to celebrate!

Since the theme was "milk and cookies" (gender neutral-yay!) We decided the menu would be, you guessed it, milk and cookies!

There were 5 or 6 different kinds of cookies, milk cartons from a local school cafeteria for the kiddos and coffee punch for the grown ups...yum!

The colors were pink, blue, brown and cream, and lots of polka dots for the chocolate chip effect.

The decor was a milk tanker truck that belongs to Monkey See and Monkey Do and flower pots from the back porch to hold pictures from the past year of the babies. I also had some pictures framed on the table.

This is the cake table. We had chocolate chip cake with caramel butter cream icing. The children had chocolate chip cupcakes with whipped cream icing and mini chocolate chips. The babies had white smash cakes with Duncan Hines incing! (They loved it!)

Each of the flower pots holds more pictures of the babies. One specifically has pictures of Bud and the other has pictures of Daisy.

Here is their cake... I loved the way it turned out!!

A close up of the toppers! Aren't they precious?!? I made the cake, but not the toppers- I wish! A friend makes them and I just had to have them for this cake. They were perfect!

As far as activities, we kept it simple. The plan was to decorate cookies, have a pinata, open presents and then do cake. But, at the last minute I was able to snag a mini jumperoo from a friend for the kids to play in. It was perfect!

And, we didn't have to decorate the cookies!! YAY! Less mess!! HA!

Then we moved on as planned, to the pinata!

I wanted to make a cookie pinata but had the hardest time finding brown streamers so I finally ran out of time and went with the #1 from party city.

Daisy trying to figure out what to do with this heavy bat!

Bud liked it, but I think they were both more curious about the bat!

Sweet baby L getting her turn at bat too!! She is so precious!

Monkey Do taking a turn. Monkey See refused to try... too many people watching him!

Puddin went a little crazy! She loves the pinata! Ha!

Some other friends taking their turns too...

These kids were getting serious!

Finally- Cousin G sliced it in half!

Next, we moved on to presents....

Bud is ready!

Daisy too!

This little teapot is soooo cute!!!

Bud...hehe... it looks like he is tired of hearing me read the card! He actually wanted to eat it!

Nana and Papa! We love them!

The babies also got a great radio flyer wagon with seat belts and a canopy!! They loved it!!

A big shot of the group. We are also opening presents in front of the birthday book table. This has a book for each of the babies and as our guests arrive or leave they write a message to the babies inside. We do this for each birthday and each child. So when they are all grown up - sniff, sniff- they will have quite a collection of books and memories!

Too bad we didn't get a better picture of the table. OOPS!

This year they each got the book, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. We also had the mouse that goes along with the book sitting on the table.

Next.... time for cake!!!

My dad calls them sour puss and smiley... I thought this pictures accurately portrays that!

YUM!

I love Monkey Do's face here!! He really wants some of that cake!! HA!

And "A"'s face here just cracks me up!!

notice the difference in the cakes... and the icing covered hand to the back of Monkey See's head.

Puddin thought watching Daisy smash up her cake then eat it was hysterical!

Sweet boy!

I LOVE the next 2 pics of thier sweet baby toes!!

Almost done!

yep- the tank is full!

Love the goatee look he has here! ha!

The party wa scoming to an end. The kiddos played for a bit more while I bathed the birthday babies. They were so tired when I got them out of the tub I just put them to bed! It may have been the 1st party ever that the guests of honor took a nap!

Pudidn was sad to tell her friends goodbye but we had a great day!

Now it's time to gear up for the next big party! At least I have until July to prepare!