The Tangrens

Saturday started with Derek's parents coming over to child proof the cupboards and watch Hyrum as Derek and I went off alone together to the ward clean up. It was fun to be together without having to worry what Hyrum was getting into. The rest of the afternoon was spent running around picking up things for Hyrum's birthday party, going to the BBQ after the clean up and planting tomatoes in our garden. Then we set up for Hyrum's party. It was an "under the sea" theme.
The invitations:
I made three and Derek made three...can you guess which ones are which?
The favor bags:

The decorations:


It was suppose to be the ocean that they would "swim" through while waiting for the other guests to arrive. I was planning to blow bubbles while they swam as well.
They were suppose to hang like this so that it would have the full affect. But mostly it looked like this instead...

Not as effective...oh well we had a TON of boys at the party and they really preferred to yank on them and tear them down. It was good in theory.

As they arrived they were to paint food coloring onto plates ( I was too cheap to get the decorated plates) for their cake later.Then they hung them to dry while we played games. This was the set up...

This was probably one of the best received activities although very few used their plates for the cake. Oh well it was good that we had a bunch. For the games we played "Jump the stream" with the older kids using a afghan that I'd made as the stream. We actually have quite a few pictures of this particular event all of the boys really got into the challenge of jumping the stream and there were some fun pictures of them jumping here is just one example...
In the background you will see my mother in law holding Hyrum. I honestly don't know what we would have done without her. With 16 crazy kids running around we were busy keeping them from running a muck. If she hadn't been there he probably would have been in the street picking eating tar off the asphalt. I apologize if you are reading this and weren't invited to the party. I started to make the list of everyone I wanted to invite and it was just getting ridiculous. Not that any of you were dying to go to a one year olds party but I would have really loved to have invited more people. Some of you might be heaving a sigh of relief that I didn't send you a sweet
little fish and if that's the case than I'm glad. :) ( but I still would have loved to have you there. )

The main event was the baby crawling race. This was for all of Hyrum's friends, the kids his age. The rules were that siblings and parents only could encourage from the sidelines and finish line. No parent or sibling could touch or push or in anyway force the baby to crawl. There is no way to really capture this scene without a ton of pictures. I should have made a video but here you go.

The starting line.
This is what the starting line looked like after about two or three minutes ( maybe more) after the race started...


And this is a picture of the finish line at the same time...
This really doesn't capture the hysteria of clapping, screaming, encouraging and cheering that was going on on this end of the race. Honestly I was impressed by the persistence of parents and siblings. Slowly one little boy would venture forward which brought even more ruckus. Then he'd stop and sit down or head off in a different direction. Then another would venture out as well. But he'd stop to eat some grass or pick a dandelion.

Ultimately it was Hyrum who was lured by mom who he sadly hadn't seen much of that day and the big Tonka truck that Grandma and Papa had gotten him for Christmas that finally brought him smiling across the finish line first. It was a blast. I want to do it at every first birthday party I throw.

Then came time for cake. I had fully intended to make Hyrum his own cake and even little cupcakes for his friends with birthdays around his but I simply ran out of time and ended up just giving him the first piece of the cake I'd gotten for the rest of the guests. Grandpa Tangren got Hyrum a "outfit" to put on his highchair so that he could be king for the day.
The cake...
Apparently I don't give Hyrum nearly enough gooey finger foods because this is his reaction to the frosting...


Then he would hold them up like "get this off". I need to let him get messy more. And that is that!

I also got an incredible suprize that day from my wonderful sister Nikki, she's planning and packing for the first romantic getaway since they've had kids and she took the time to send me this...A sister Mother's day card! What an incredible sister! When really SHE is the AMAZING mom. Thanks Nik! I love you!