~Harvest Birthdays~

This weekend we celebrated Aiden's 5th and Felicia's 15th birthdays. We planned a Harvest themed birthday party. We had baked ziti, kielbasa with peppers, onions and Barbecue sauce, buttered garlic ziti for the picky bunch, garlic bread, cheese pizza along with pepperoni pizza, a variety of chips and sodas, as well as 100% juice. Ooh, let's not forget my caramel apples!


Ryan ended up sick with a fever the day of the party, so 17 people that were supposed to join us did not come for not wanting to get sick themselves. We decided to go ahead and celebrate anyhow since we already had all the food and it would not last for next weekend. Incidentally, after the Tylenol kicked in, Ryan wanted to join in. Today he is totally back to himself, so whatever he had was fast moving thankfully!!

The first order of business after eating lunch was apple bobbing. Boy was this a F-U-N activity! We had a barrel of laughs as each took his or her turn. Even though it was just us, my daughter's friend, my eldest daughter's friend, a neighbor, and Mike's brother's family there was still enough of us for a fun time.






Next up was cider donut eating from a string. No hands allowed!!! We secured a rope going from one end of the swing set to the other, clothesline style. Then we hung the donuts with ribbons from the rope. All the children lined up and had a rip roaring hilarious time trying to eat these without the aid of their hands.






We ended up letting Aiden and Felicia open their gifts on the patio and kind of rushed that part along since it became very dark cloudy and a few drops began to fall sporadically.


We then ushered everyone inside for cake. We got a great big cake, very unique and perfect for our harvest theme. It had a tree off to the side with all the pretty fall colored leaves. I added Brach's pumpkin creme candies along the bottom for a pumpkin patch look, and some candy indian corn (it has brown instead of yellow) along the side border. We sang the song, the candles were blown out and the cake and ice cream served up.



Surprisingly, as ominous as the weather looked, (and it did look weird, I even took a picture of it because the trees looked silver as the leaves were turned in the increasing wind, and the sky looked slate gray) it cleared up again very quickly and we headed back outside to play.

I had a quart mason jar filled with candy indian corn and Brach's candy pumpkins. Each guest was to take a guess at how many were in the jar, and the guesser that came closest without going over won. There were 190 candies in the jar, and uncle Justin won with his guess of 144.

Every child got to take a cone we made with scrapbook paper filled with goodies home, and also pick a pumpkin from our "patch" in the garden to take with him/her. What looked like a disaster to start with, ended up being a memorable fun birthday and my son didn't even know that anything was off. He had the best birthday, and my daughter had expressed the same. It made me thankful that they are easy to please, and can find pleasure in smaller scale things. What a blessing that was to me!