February- getting ready for Matty's first BD party

Written March 31, 2006
Planning Matty's party was so much fun. I was so excited that my little baby was going to eat his first taste of chocolate cake and all the ice cream he wanted. I planned the theme based on the cake pattern and one of Matty's favorite toys this year: Rubber duckies. The invitations, cake, plates and napkins were duckies. It would have been cute to play duck duck goose and color a picture of a duckie, but the ages of the kids we invited were mostly under 2, so that wouldn't have really worked. I was also in a lot of pain that day- so I would have liked to have read a duckie book or sang the Wiggle's song "quack quack quack quack....cockadoodledooo", but I had to be in complete survival mode to get through the day. I think God was reminding me of the pain I had been in the year before while giving birth to my precious son - so it was a bitter sweet pain and a good way to get me to keep on the current plan to wait at least through the summer before thinking about getting pregnant again!

Well, we had 8 boys at the party - Matty's 2 cousins, 3 friends from his first church (Midtown) and 2 friends from the new church and Matty. And of course their parents and our personal event photographers were there aslo (our good friends John and Effie who are dabbling in professional photography gave us a "freebie") That was round one of the birthday extravaganza. 11:30-1:00. Then for the second half of the day- 5 grandparents, 2 aunts, an uncle, and 2 honorary aunties came. (The aunt and uncle who are the parents of the two cousins were faithfully there through both parties though. Can this be more confusing? :) 1:00-3:00

My number one computer activitiy of the month of February was getting Matty's first year of video footage edited and condensed down into 20 minutes of pure Matty Memorabilia! What a star! It was such a hit for the second half of his birthday for his grandparents, aunts, uncle and family friends to watch. They laughed and oooohed and ahhhed and made it totally worth all the late nights of painstakingly cutting and pasting and draging and watching and rewatching and putting the music and titles and just the right places.... you'd have no idea a 20 minute production could take 20 or so hours to accomplish unless you've also done video editing. I think I'm getting better at it though, probably most of that time was me learning how to do it.

Chris, Matty and I were so exhausted after the day- which lasted until 4:30, way past his second nap time. But it was worth it. He got many beautiful gifts and we were blessed to know that he is SOOOO loved. Everyone who came had been a special part of Matty's first year of life and it was great to celebrate him with them!