We thought it would be a good idea to host two parties in one weekend while I was six months pregnant… we were WRONG.  Saturday was our gender reveal party and Sunday was Camryn’s second birthday party.  All my family is from out of town and some of Weston’s family is too, so we thought we would save them a trip and do two parties in one weekend.  Not only was it exhausting, but one person testing positive for COVID the day before the first party cut our guest list significantly for both parties.  I doubt we will ever host two parties in one weekend again!

THEME

Camryn’s pediatrician and dentist both recommended that we not give Camryn sugar until she’s 2.  First of all, this is extremely difficult because sugar is in ALL the things.  Second, literally everyone else thought it was crazy and kept trying to push sugar on her and make our jobs as parents more difficult.  Some even gave her sugar against our wishes.  All that to say that we thought it would be fun to celebrate sugar with a TWO SWEET ice cream party!  Everyone but Camryn enjoyed the ice cream – she just wanted the M&M’s!

DECORATIONS

Since we had the gender reveal party the night before, I didn’t want the decorations to be too over the top.  It needed to be cute, but quick to set up since we had a late night the night before and we had church the morning of Camryn’s party.

There were a few types of decorations we had at Camryn’s first birthday party that I wanted to carry on each year – balloons, photos, and a framed invitation.  We had a balloon garland, a giant 2 balloon, and “TWO SWEET” balloons.  Last year, I arranged one set of Camryn’s monthly photos into the shape of a 1.  This year, I arranged some of my favorite photos of Camryn into the shape of a 2.  I also just love the way invitations look in a frame, so I did that again for her party.  The most difficult/time-consuming part was the balloon garland, but we bought an electric balloon pump a few months ago and it made the process a lot quicker than last year.  I think it only took about 20 minutes to blow up the balloons and set up the garland!

FOOD

We planned Camryn’s birthday party for 11:30 am so that we could be finished before her nap time.  Since we were already doing an ice cream topping bar, we added pizza to eat for lunch.  I definitely had to have theme-related sugar cookies and an actual cake instead of my sad cake like last year.  We *attempted* to do a cake smash now that we were finally allowing sugar.  By attempted, I mean it was a complete fail both times.  The first attempt was during the party right after singing Happy Birthday.  Camryn was clinging to Weston the whole time and was not happy when I put a little icing on her mouth.  The second attempt was when she woke up from her nap.  We thought maybe she would be more interested in the cake without an audience, but we were wrong.  She looked at it for a while and even touched the icing with her fingers.  Unfortunately, having the icing on her fingers upset her, so we had to give up on the cake smash.  Maybe next year she will enjoy her cake!