Dinosaur Parties!

We celebrated our little dude's second birthday with not one, but two birthday parties! The first was on the patio area of our apartment building on Saturday evening with friends from school, volleyball, our building, and the other Americans.  The second was on Sunday evening in a covered area behind our church after the night service.

Carter had been sick that week (even ending up at the hospital on Wednesday with a fever over 104) but we were so thankful his antibiotics were working and he was feeling much better in time to enjoy his weekend :) We had some friends from Brasilia drive in Friday afternoon to spend the weekend with us, and Carter had such a great time running around our apartment with their two little boys!

One thing we've definitely been blessed with is a GOOD napper.  But in keeping with an apparent tradition of his, Carter did not nap the day of his party (as he did the day of his first birthday party one year ago...).  I was running around frantic to get everything set up downstairs (no matter how much you prepare ahead of time, there is just never enough time to get all the decorations hung and displayed) and fighting the CRAZY wind which kept blowing everything away (not blowing everything over, but away!).  I cannot begin to tell you how grateful I am to have friends who came over early and stayed late to help with everything!  Since it was so windy, I had to forego a lot of my decorations and also wasn't able to get everything set up in time to take pictures of it all :( But here are some pics from the first party:

 dino dig: we made 'fossils' (a tiny plastic dinosaur that we baked in a sand mixture) for the kids to excavate and break open

 the hubs and our dear friend pedro appeased me and made these awesome dino melons!

 bean bag toss

 party hats

 party masks

 foam dino feet to go over the kids' shoes

 'american dinos' (plus one brazilian friend)

 the infamous cardboard and crepe paper 2!

 some of the goodies.  we also had hotdogs, popcorn, fruit, cake, and cupcakes

 my first attempt at a cake....i probably should have done a practice run, or made it before the morning of the party in case something went wrong, haha.  but i think you can tell it's supposed to be a dino, so that's a success in my book ;)

singing to our birthday boy! 

 i had a friend make backup cupcakes just in case...

i know nick was happy to finally have this huge photo prop out of our living room!

our friend pedro who helped with EVERYTHING! from buying the hotdogs and buns, to getting sand for the fossil dig, to blowing up balloons, to hanging decorations, to carving a watermelon, to setting up tables and chairs, to cooking hot dogs.  whew, i'm tired just writing all of that!

 some of his friends singing happy birthday

 the final count was 49 people! our little guy sure is loved <3

fishing for party favors on the way out

The second 'party' was originally intended just to be sodas and cupcakes after church, we weren't planning to decorate or anything....But then it seemed like such a waste of all of our leftover items from the first party - espcially since the wind had prevented us from really using everything! (And there weren't as many young children as we expected at the first one, so we had lots of leftover masks, hats, and feet!)  I had some super sweet friends from church meet me up there that Sunday afternoon to set up some balloons, and the table, and boy, did they blow me away! Check out how great it turned out:

 we are so thankful to be a part of this church family.  they have truly welcomed us and taken us in!

It was a busy, full, and wonderful weekend! Maybe I'll be recovered enough by next June to think about throwing another birthday party...

 1st birthday party

2nd birthday party

p.s. - I have to brag on what a big help nick was! he cut cardboard, glued dino spikes, baked fossils, carved watermelons, shopped for food/drinks/plates/decorations, set up, broke down, cleaned up, etc. etc. I don't think too many women can boast of a husband who's willing to do all this for a 2nd birthday...

p.p.s. - I also have to thank the Mason family for sending down so many cute dino decorations and party favors from the states...everything was a hit!