It was a jungle in here.

I've been consumed. This is the first time I've fired up the computer since Thursday. Who knew that planning a birthday party for a one year old would be this consuming???? I may have gone overboard. Who knows. But the days leading up to the party were a complete panic. Every day in the 7 day forecast was set to be beautiful. Except, of course, for Sunday, which had a 60% chance of rain. It was supposed to storm at 8am for only a 1/2 hour and move quickly. Then it was supposed to be nice, but very, very windy. 30 mph winds windy. And at 9 am, we still hadn't made a decision on whether or not we should still have it at the park, but we made a game-time decision that the wind would be just too much and our balloons and cake would be strewn around the playground if we even tried, so in the end, the weather won. We had it at our tiny house. It's not really tiny, but it is when you cram 30 people in there. We made the best of it though, we pushed all the tables against the walls and spread out all the food, made a mad dash to decorate, and there was sweating involved. But in the end, there was plenty of seating and open space for little people to play. I had a lot of fun with this jungle theme! I am so excited! I recommend it to anyone having a party. Plus you have tons of leftover decorations should you decide to have a luau in your backyard in the summer after you get it re-sodded. Ahem. Anyway, here's the cake table. The little bags on the left side are our favors for the adults, which were candy bars that gave proceeds to endangered animals. (My mom's idea). She wrapped them up in paper bags and we called them "Supply Rations."I made "Jungle Juice" (non-alcoholic) and each child got a safari hat and binoculars as part of their goodie bags and an animal sippie cup for the juice. I also had a kiddie snack table with grapes (labeled "snake eggs") and potato chips (labeled "beetle wings) and animal crackers and trail mix. This was an idea I got off the internet and it really was cute. So I can't take the credit. My journalistic ethics beg me to give credit to the mom who pioneered the Jungle themed kiddie snack table before me.
My dad made a cute safari jeep out of cardboard that we put around the little red wagon we bought Poops for his birthday, and the kids took turns sitting in it for pictures. He did such a good job!! It was so cute! He also as a bonus made a cardboard gorilla and cut the face out so kids could stick their faces in the hole and look like the gorilla. All this time and I never knew my Pops was this crafty. Snaps to Gampy! Here he is posing with Poops.
Poops had a blast and did really well double-fisting his smash cake. I was impressed. At age one, he demonstrates true eating abilities. I am not surprised that he excels in this area given our family history. On both sides.
It got a little messier than this of course, but not bad enough to require an outfit change. It was really fun, though! The jungle was cleaned up by 8 o'clock and you'd have hardly known we even had a party here. But man, I was leveled yesterday. Poops had his one year checkup which meant shots (oh yay!) and we slept for most of the day. We're all recuperated and the house is a disaster again. Just like it should be. Haha! Now I'm off to read blogs! Hope you had a great weekend!