Birthday Week Galore

Two birthdays two years and two days apart with children of the same gender present it's own unique set of fun and challenges.
All 4 of my children were born on major small town celebration weekends.
Precious Jewel's birthday falls on the weekend that our little town holds it's annual Christmas Parade, Downtown lighting and Christmas Home Tours. It takes up pretty much the entire weekend and makes it difficult to plan for a birthday party.
Why not the week before?
Thanksgiving.
The week after?
The last week of school and then everyone heads out for Christmas Vacation.

Mr. Smiles and Good Lookin' were both born the weekend of our town's Spring Craft Festival.
Up until two years ago, Mr. Smiles thought the weekend-long celebration was in honor of him.
It sorta' burst their bubbles when they realized that even if they hadn't been born that weekend, there would still have been some sort of Festival.
It also presents challenges in the planning arena.

Labor Day weekend was the weekend our last little munchkin was born.
In fact, our Dr. graciously offered to up the C-section by 2 days so he could still go boating with his family.
Wasn't that nice?

Doing a Dual Birthday party with two boys of very different personalities and tastes presents a unique challenge and a bit of skillful manipulation on my part every year.

Mr. Smiles and Good Lookin' celebrated their first party together the day Good Lookin' came home from the hospital on Mr. Smiles 2nd birthday. Both were too little to care.
The next birthday we did a combined Thomas Party for the 2 boys. Once again, still young enough that they didn't care what I picked.
The year after they wanted very different themes and I scratched my head as to how to pull that one off.
Lightning McQueen and Rescue Heroes.
A divided table with a whole lot of colored streamers worked well.
For Mr Smiles 5th and Good Lookin's 3rd we tried 2 separate parties on back-to-back weekends.
People came to one and not the other.
That didn't fly to well.
Last year Good Lookin' (my introvert) just wanted 1 friend and to have his party at Grandmama's house.
Easy Peasy.
Mr Smiles (my ever-so-outgoing extrovert) wanted EVERY CHILD in our church to come.
(Fortunately we go to a small church).
20+ kids and parents in attendance left me with a sugar and noise induced headache but very happy that he was happy. He LOVED it.
That brings us to this year.
Both boys asked for STAR WARS
YES! The same theme!!

I had also just recently stumbled across another mom's blog where she had just done a STAR WARS party for her triplets.
She had this AWESOME idea for party favors that didn't break the bank. Pool Noodles turned Light Sabers.
I totally went for it!

The week snuck up on me a whole lot faster than I was ready for and I had no cake planned.
I like to decorate my kid's cakes. I'm not a decorator and have never taken a class, but it's a lot of fun.
Once again, I waded into the mom world of facebook and begged off more ideas. I can't link to the person's facebook page for you to see the original inspiration, but it was pretty cool.
The boy's first reaction: "I thought you said they'd be fighting each other."
Ummmm...no.

The light sabers: A HUGE SUCCESS
There was some pretty serious yelling, hollering, running around and dueling taking place in our front yard and in the paths Luke had mowed through our trees.

Luke and his dad waded out into the yard with all the boys and went crazy.
I had never seen his dad have quite so much with all the pool noodles and short little people running around.
The boys loved it.

I also forgot candles and they each ended up with one bright pink one to blow out.
They were so light-sabered-up that they didn't notice a bit. Whew!!!

The pandemonium of present time wasn't as bad as it has been in years past partly due to some of the little party goers escaping back out the front door to continue their duels.

Have you all seen these BAY BLADES?
I'm not sure I'm even spelling them right.
Both boys were given them by a little friend for their birthdays.
I guess there is a cartoon that goes with them that the boys will never see since we have all cable and satellite shut off to our house, but they LOVE the toys.
They are nothing more that glorified TOPS.
Every single boy eventually ended up back in the kitchen and for a full 30-40 minutes battled it out with their little metal tops dinging and clanging each other out of their plastic arena.
Needless to say, it was a successful birthday weekend.