Party and other ramblings...

I am enjoying the few years in my boys life that I can actually choose their party theme and guest list. I have a feeling those days are over when it comes to big brother. C has already informed me that for his birthday he wants a bouncy house, Scooby Doo, and has already started to assemble the guest list. Keep in mind that his birthday is MONTHS away.
But, little man is going to be a YEAR OLD next month. Isn't it crazy how time flies? It seems like yesterday I was sitting in the hospital with his birth mom, scared out of my mind. With the normal "baby" stuff like, well, "What the heck am I going to do with a baby??!?!" and a terrible fear that she was going to change her mind. You see, we hadn't had the best of luck in the adoption department with C's process and even though that ended well, I couldn't shake the feeling that we were REALLY pressing our luck in the family department. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. I am the perpetual doubting Thomas. But much to my surprise, they handed me this little 7 pound 11 ounce baby boy on November 10th and my life forever changed. Our lawyer was a little high strung and was adamant about getting J OUT OF THE HOSPITAL FAST!!! once he was released to us. You see, he is an adoptive parent times 15(!!!) and his last adoption fell through at the hospital as they were getting the baby in the car. Talk about adding unnecessary pressure. I thought my heart was going to leap out of my chest as we stood in the freezing cold trying to latch the FREAKIN' car seat into the car for the first time. Finally the nurse stepped in and did it for us. She STILL handed us the baby despite our lack of car seat skills.  In retrospect, I have no idea why we didn't do that in advance. And we were almost out of gas as well (going back to the surprise that these people actually handed us a one day old baby!?!?!) In our defense we thought we had another 2.5 weeks before his arrival, but still. Geesh. Honestly, we weren't thinking of anything else except. GET.THAT.BABY.HOME!!!
Flying unicorns could have picked us up on their golden chariot and I wouldn't have thought twice about it.
Wow, that was a tangent. Still with me?
So, the pressures of a first birthday party. It's odd, because J won't remember a single blasted thing from this day. Yet, I am assuming this is a multi-million dollar industry. You would be shocked to know the amount of things that boast "My FIRST Birthday!" I'm not one for the BIG birthday hoopla. That show "My sweet 16" makes me almost vomit every time think about it. Don't tell C, but he can dream of the bounce house all he wants. There WILL NOT be one in our backyard come Spring. Nor will we ever have a petting farm, circus performers of any type, D.J.'s, face painters, tattoo artists, castles, rock walls, or anything of the sort at a birthday celebration for these two boys. Sorry guys. If it's any consolation you'll get to pick out your birthday dinner and cake flavor....
We have cake and friends at home. Period. Maybe as they get older a "location" party, slumber party (do boys have slumber parties??) I guess they are called "camp-outs" or something of that nature. But anyway, I think it's INSANE to spend hundreds of dollars on one day of fun to simply say "You were born today and I'm glad".
Don't get me wrong, I want it to be special and atheistically pleasing. I WILL buy coordinating plates and napkins. I WILL make a ton of handmade stuff like banners and cute labels for food. My goal is to make it LOOK like million dollars NOT spend a million dollars. That could be the theme of my life :)
So, we I am going with a construction theme. It's gonna be so cute! I can't wait to show you the pictures. In the meantime, here are some seek peeks! And for the record, I am addicted to Pinterest.

Cake inspiration