Owl and Otter throw a party

Well, my baby girls are one year old.

Of course a lot has happened in that year, and so much has changed.  In their eleventh month they started sleeping through the night (both of them!  Consistently! All night!).  They started playing happily a lot during the day.

At their one year check-up they were finally on the growth charts!  Otter was up to 15 pounds and 27.5 inches.  Owl was 15#7oz and 27.5 inches.  So they were both right around 3rd percentile for weight, and 10th for length.  It was a great gain since their last check.  Good enough, in fact, that they've started growing out of clothes that they've worn for quite a long time!!  So exciting!  We've never had any big growth spurt that required a big closet clean-out...until now.

I threw a family party for them.  The theme was pinwheels, using a vintage-y color palette.

I think I over-booked myself with party preparations, though, and was feeling the lack of sleep at the party.  I usually feel like parties are something that I can do to show love to my kids, but this time I think it would have been better to have spent time WITH them rather than FOR them...but it's done, and I think it was fun in the end. 

Plus I had been so busy with preparations that I didn't have time to take pictures of decorations beforehand, or guests during the party.  Which is sad, since I enjoy taking pictures of party stuff.  My brother was nice and took pictures for me.  Some are a little goofy, though I'm only putting the BEST of the goofy pictures on here : )  (Thanks, Ev.)

Anyhow, here's the invitation:

The bulk of our prep time was spent trying to clear out and fix up the back yard a little, which probably wasn't even noticeable (really, our yard still isn't as nice as the average yard). 
Aside from the yard stuff, the rest of the time was spent painting crates and canning jars, making pinwheels, and cleaning the labels off of Frappuccino bottles.  I watched Psych a lot while I worked on party stuff.

Here's the table before the food was all brought out.

I bought a cool water dispenser that looked like a giant canning jar.  I love it.  Word to the wise, though: don't serve cucumber water.  I like it, but it was quite poorly received, was cited as the cause of someone feeling sick, and has been the subject of continued teasing from my oldest brother.  It did LOOK pretty, though...see how it matches the tablecloth?

 

My AMAZING visiting teachers, Heidi & Jen, came over the night before the party and frosted cupcakes.  They also made all of the mini pinwheels that are on the cupcakes...super cute! 
The babies got individual 4" vanilla cakes.
I'll have a separate post with pictures of them eating their cakes...
I've heard that it was the most entertaining and fascinating part of the whole party.

 

This picture shows the lights the best--they were swaggy and had fabric scraps tied on. 
I was happy with how cute they looked.  There were also lights with scraps out on the deck railing.
This picture also shows the table with all of the food on it. 
Pink lemonade, chocolate milk, fruit salad, pizza, decorated apple slices, roll ups, veggies with dip, and of course the cakes.

Thank you, Jude, for preparing the apple slices!



 The favors were baby food jars with painted lids and custom hangtags. 

They had Jelly Bellies and yogurt-covered raisins. 
The jars all came from the twins' food in the past few months.
















The cake!  Neapolitan layers with Swiss meringue buttercream frosting that was tinted pink at the bottom and graduated to white at the top.  Chocolate sprinkles on top, and there were pinwheels sticking out as well.  It was pretty in a very understated way.  I felt that it was just "ok" tasting...the frosting wasn't sweet enough, in my opinion.

Cupcakes were the three cake flavors, but one flavor per cupcake.

 

 

 The babies were both very cute: they were so happy!  I think they knew that the party was their special time.  They got passed around and held without being fussy about wanting me or Dave, and were generally charming  : )

Grandma N with a happy Owl.
Grandma was probably sleep deprived also...she took the older three kids for the couple of days before the party so that I could get some less-interrupted work done.  Thank you, Grandma & Grandpa!

I'm so grateful for everyone that was able to come celebrate with us!



And of course...presents.  We designated Chick and Moose as the present openers (Monkey was off playing with her cousin).

Moose took his job very seriously and showed us every card.

Otter pop.

They loved their presents : )

Owlie.

All in all, a fun time celebrating two special girls!  They are so sweet (and tolerant), and are a great addition to our family.  And hooray!  We made it through the first year!