A Surprise 2nd Birthday Party

You may wonder how you have a surprise birthday party for a toddler.  Well, it was a surprise for me, not him. Benji's birthday is tomorrow, February 1st.  His family birthday party was planned for next Saturday, the 6th. This morning, about an hour before church, Mark had the idea to have the party this afternoon instead of next weekend. This made sense for many reasons: 1) It was to be be a beautiful sunny day today, and next weekend is supposed to be rainy  2) The gift we got Ben was a bounce house, for the purpose of being used indoors on rainy days to get the boys' energy out.  The next ten days are forecasted to be rainy (groan) so a bounce house would be really nice to have this week.  


I admit that it took me a few hours to come to terms with the fact that I now had to whip together a party in two hours instead of having lots of time to prepare (I love having lots of time to prepare for things), but we worked together to make it happen and it turned out quite well.  


We went to church as planned and then Mark took the boys to do some shopping, get lunch, and go to the playground.  While he was out of the house, I quickly whipped together some cupcakes and cleaned up the house.  When the boys returned home and went down for naps, we decorated and cleaned up the backyard in preparation for the bounce house.


Benji was so excited when he woke up from his nap and saw the decorations everywhere.  The cousins and other family members arrived just a few minutes later and he got to see the unveiling of his big gift: a bounce house!  He was so incredibly happy with his bounce house that the joy just radiated from his face.  He was in bounce heaven.  After the kids had their fill of bouncing, we did the usual birthday party stuff: sang Happy Birthday!, had cupcakes, and opened presents.  Later in the evening we transferred the bounce house indoors and let the kids bounce some more.  It was a really good time and I think Ben had a lot of fun.

Green cupcake frosting because "Bean!" is Ben's favorite color

If you drive past our house on a rainy day, you just might see this.

Matching jammies, handmade by the boys' great-grandmother.