Birthday party part one

As I last posted, we were having Matthew’s first round of his birthday party last weekend.  We decided to leave on Friday instead of Saturday since Matthew had been getting up for about 3 hours during the night and we figured it would be easier to be in Sartell instead of Winona if he decided to do that Friday.  Boy were we right!  He was up a couple times Friday night screaming and I didn’t get to sleep until 5:30 in the morning.  I had a terrible time falling asleep and everytime Matthew moved I heard it, which delayed the falling asleep process for me…then he woke up around 2:15, just as I had started dozing.  If we had stayed home Friday night we would not have made the trip on Saturday.

After getting in a little sleep we had to get up because everyone was arriving for the party and we had to get ready.  We grilled and visited and the kids played for a bit until we ate cake.  Matthew got his own piece and he made a pretty good mess of himself trying to eat it.  He didn’t know what to do with it since he always gets his food broken up in pieces and we just gave him the whole piece of cake so I broke off a little and gave it to him and he seemed to get the idea.  He had frosting in his ear and on his lap.  He was just in a diaper to make it easier for cleanup, which was pretty easy when we just threw him straight in the bathtub!  After cleaning him up we all went to the wading pool to go swimming.  The girls all had fun and Matthew decided it was nap time so his time in the water was short lived.  He took a nap on daddy instead.  After spending quite a while in the pool, we all got dried off and changed and moved over to the park to play.  That was fun until Matthew kept getting upset with us because we wouldn’t let him eat the rocks, grass, dirt or anything else he found on the ground.  We headed back to Shane & Denise’s for supper and the kiddos all played.  Eventually everyone went their own way for the night and we all got back together again on Sunday for brunch.  We had a good time and a lot of really good food!  The party was pretty easy for me to plan since Denise did most of the work, with the help of Kaitlyn & Kylie (Thanks girls!!!)  The cake they picked out was really cute and I don’t think I could have picked a better one myself; it matched the invitations pretty well and matched what I was looking for and I didn’t even tell them what I had been thinking of.

We were the first to leave on Sunday since we were nearing Matthew’s nap time and we wanted to take advantage of that while driving.  It’s a good thing we left when we did because I94 was down to 1 lane in Minneapolis and we were in stop & go traffic back by Monticello.  We stopped at the Albertville Outlet Mall on the way to see if the traffic would get better and to give us a break since Matthew wasn’t sleeping any longer.  We did some shopping but didn’t really find a whole lot.  It was just nice to get out and walk a little since we didn’t know what the traffic was going to be like as we got closer to the cities.  We ended up taking a different way home in hopes of missing the worst of the construction which we did, so that was a great idea!  We ended up getting back home around 7:30 and we got to unload the Jeep in the rain.

I will post pictures sometime.  I don’t know where the card reader is to upload them to my computer and the box it should have been packed in won’t be unpacked until our room is painted and set up…so it’s going to be a while.