Mexico Part 15: Elijah's Friend Birthday Party

The birthday boy.  I don't know why we put the suit on.  He never once got in the pool.

The big sister.  She had a blast with all the siblings of the little kids I invited to the party.

The cakes.  I made two because I thought I wouldn't have enough (surprise, surprise).  I totally had enough.  I think I ate pound cake for a week after this party.

My brother Ricky and I had about a million of these pictures of us growing up sharing a birthday.  We were both March babies.  These two can be so sweet sometimes.  Emphasis on the sometimes.

He LOVES icecream.

Licking up the icecream.  Doesn't everyone do this?

On Friday, May 6th, my brother Alex's official birthday, we celebrated Elijah's birthday with some great people that we have met here in Guadalajara.  Seriously, I feel so blessed to have Eva in school so that I can meet people there, go to church so that I can meet more people, and then have the Guadalajara Wives Club so that I can meet even more, more people.  This time we mostly invited people in Elijah's nursery class.  If I didn't then the party would have been a crazy size and frankly with no real income, that would have been tough.  So, almost all the people from the party with the exception of some of Matthew's teammates from school were from nursery.  I don't know how much Elijah really noticed.  He is kind of a loner sometimes.  He spent most of the party eating watermelon and trying to escape from the party than actually get into the pool for his little swim party.  We had it at the club house here where we live and that was kind of a crazy story.  First, we decided that it would be a swim party and what a better theme than to have an American BBQ to go with the swimming.  I went to Costco and bought hamburgers and hot dogs and everything was set to go.  Awhile back when we were swimming at the club house we saw that the BBQ there was a charcoal kind so we knew we had to get to the party somewhat early and start the charcoal before the guests arrived.  After loading most of all the food in the wagon, Matthew went down to the club house only to find that there was NO BBQ.  I seriously  could not believe it.  I called the guard house asking him about the BBQ and he said that everyone brings their own.  What!?  Here we were, it was 4:30 by this point, guests were going to be coming at 5:00 and we had no BBQ.  Thank goodness they built a Walmart nearby that just opened about a month ago because I sent Matthew to purchase a BBQ for us.  We had been wanting one but not like this, so spur of the moment. Matthew came back with the BBQ at about 5:00 and we quickly proceeded to put this thing together.  Meanwhile, the kids are running around all over the club house and Elijah kept getting stuck at the top of the hill whining for us to get him down while Matthew and I were frantically putting this BBQ together.  Talk about stressful.  Luckily, our first guest didn't show up until about 5:30 so she didn't see us putting the thing together, but that put us super behind on the charcoals.  It totally stunk.  I hate being late on the food, and it wasn't my fault really but I did learn a lot.  Never assume a facility has anything in this country.  And that is so true!  Thanks to some ingenious thinking, like using a blow dryer to get the charcoals going, we fed people at a decent time and I think the party was a success.

The theme for the party was cars.  It is so hard with a two year old who doesn't speak much to tell you what they would want for their birthday, so I just assumed he would like this the best.  We did little car invitations with my cricut.  Put together little baggies for the kids that had some of Elijah's favorites.  It had a little car, balloon, fruit snacks (those are a hot commodity around here since you can't find the small packs.  I saw that costco brought those giant packs of fruit snacks but they aren't the same as the little packs in my opinion.), homemade play dough and car stickers.  The little kids especially liked everything in the baggies, and really that was who they were geared to.  His birthday cake, was my first attempt at putting a cake together.  I used this website to copy Elijah's car cake.  It was a fun experience.  I am usually a cupcake person, but it was fun doing this.  And when it came time to give out cake, most of the kids wanted the wheels because they were donuts.  Darn kids, didn't they know all the effort it took me to put the cake together?  They were supposed to want a slice of the car, not the donuts :)  I guess it was good that at least they wanted some of the cake.  It meant it looked appealing.  My first party here in Mexico is done, and while I missed all my friends from home A TON during Eli's birthday, I realized we are lucky to meet great people wherever we are in life.

Some of the guests at Elijah's birthday...

We (okay some) think that is Elijah's girlfriend.  He gets super excited to see Kylee in pictures.  And in real life, he has been known to put the moves on her.

Some of my favorite Puerto Ricans!  Gabriel is Eva's age.  And Elijah spends a lot of time with Yasiris when we get together for wives club.

If I could only be as patient and calm as Jenn when I have four kids (okay, if I have four kids) I will feel like super mom.  

Alan from Elijah's nursery.  He couldn't get enough of the pool.  He was so cute!

Eva loves these girls from church.  Since our primary is small there are a lot of muli-aged groups.  These girls are super sweet to Eva who is much younger than them.

Little Dylan from nursery too.  She kept wanting me to take her picture.

Alan's little brother.  Eli doesn't see him much but I thought those ears were adorable.