My boys aren’t babies anymore! Mater and McQueen recently celebrated their third and fourth birthdays with a super hero themed party. I, for one thought it was fabulous! When I started the hunt for the perfect party theme, I originally had settled on a camping theme, but it was a little too cold to do it outside and I hated the thought of doing a camping theme indoors. So for some odd reason, I decided to ask the boys what they wanted… BOOM! I was hit with “Batman!” and “Captain America!” Talk about crushing my creative dreams! But, with a little help I was able to pull it off without using the typical party decorations.

I decided to go with simple super hero logos and use the colored tablecloths to accent the tables. We also used balloons to add pops of color on the backs of chairs. These also served as party favors to the kids. My favorite thing we used for decorations that I can’t really take credit for is the comic book collage placemats. My husband created these and we took them to a local teacher’s supply store and had them laminated for really cheap. To me, they really completed the tables and the kids were all able to go home with comic book placemats!

The one thing that was probably the most time-consuming was making the Super Punch Box! It was a small challenge, but so worth it! All the kids loved playing, and of course leaving with a small bag of candy. I saw the idea on Pinterest from, http://shannonmakesstuff.blogspot.com/2011/04/punch-boxgame-idea.html The only thing we changed, was instead of using boxes on the back, we taped small sandwich bags filled with candy to the back of the tissue.

I kept the party favors simple, using super hero masks and favor bags. The favor bags were stuffed with super hero candy that I found at Dollar Tree and it had the Justice League characters on it. I also stuffed them with stretchy flying super heroes that I got at Hobby Lobby. I picked up some Batman and Avengers tattoos in the little bargain bins at Michaels one day.

The food was simple, we ordered like 7 $5 foot long subs from Subway, cut them in smaller portions and served them with condiments. We also served veggies with dip and various fruits. We have been telling the boys for a while that certain veggies and fruits give you a certain super power. So I guess you can say our food had sort of a super healthy theme. Now the cupcakes…. was a whole other dilemma. After placing an order 2 weeks before then going to pick them up the day before the party, only to discover they were not what I ordered and looked TERRIBLE, we ended up going to Sams, getting some cupcakes that looked like batman and captain america and spicing them up ourselves. They ended up looking pretty good too!

The party turned out great! We didn’t spend an arm and a leg on decorations and food, and the kids all had a great time. If you have any questions about where I got this or that, feel free to ask in the comments section.

So this is going to be a short post, but I wanted to share this story with ya’ll! So as moms, we are constantly telling our kids what they can and can’t do… it comes with motherhood right? We also know, as moms, that most of the time it’s going in one ear and out the other. (Don’t you just love repeating the same stuff our parents use to say?!) Well have you ever wondered how much of what you are saying is actually sticking with them? Well be warned… your children will pick the most random things to obey… seriously. Do my kids ever recite to me, “I will not talk to strangers”, or “Look both ways and check for cars”? No, of course not, those are the important things that you want them to remember in life and why would a toddler want to remember boring stuff like that. My boys are the kinds of kids who strike up conversations with guys wearing baggy pants and dreadlocks, and tell me and I quote “I’m going to HI-YAH that car if it tries to run me over, okay mama?” Yep… that’s what I’m working with folks. So it doesn’t surprise me that while I was cooking dinner, Mcqueen would shout out, “MOMMA! HURRY CHANGE THE TV! SPONGEBOB IS ON!! THIS IS A BAD SHOW WE CAN’T WATCH!!!” I just started laughing as I changed the channel, then Mcqueen looks at me and says, “Whew that was a close one.” I’m a little worried that I may have a Drama King in my house. So that is my little story of the day… Until next time!

In case any one actually ever reads this thing, you probably noticed I haven’t posted in quite a while. It’s been a hectic few months for our little family. Mater has been having some medical issues and we’ve been having to travel back and forth to doctors for that. And of course the holidays pretty much took of the majority of my time. We live withing a couple of hours to all our families and Christmas is still pretty much the whole month of December for us! But now that the holidays are over, maybe I can get back on track to stimulating those mommies out there who are going through their holiday hangover right now!

First of all, I was totally unprepared for Christmas this year. Most years I have my shopping, wrapping, and Christmas cards out the first week of December so that I can have the rest of the month for fun activities. That was not the case this year, I still found myself Christmas shopping the week before (online shopping is wonderful isn’t it). We also did something a little different this year that worked out amazingly, and I reccommend it if you have involved grandma and grandpas there. The boys made wishlists and we emailed them to the grandparents so they would know what toys the boys were all giddy over this year. At first we thought it was a disaster because we had a group of anxious grandparents that bought their whole wishlist instead of picking out one or two things and we were left with nothing for Santa to bring Christmas morning. But behold, it ended up being a marvelous thing I tell you. I love books and Disney movies, but these are things that grandparents don’t have as much fun shopping for, so they bought the toys and we bought the gifts the would grow with them. Also the grandparents took part of their loot and wrapped it to give to us parents for Christmas morning from Santa. The boys ended up getting everything they wanted, we saved so much money, and the grandparents got to spoil their grandkids. It truly was a win win for everyone involved… except for the mountain of toys and tiny living space issue… but we’ll deal with that later.

So now with holidays over, our family also has something else going on. We will be moving in the next month or two to Oklahoma. Hubby has been offered a job there and so we will be moving to somewhere totally new and far away from our families. On the plus side I do happen to have a very close friend who moved there this past year and we will be close to each other. So I will know one person in the state of Oklahoma! I’m excited about this new adventure we’ll be going on, but a little saddened about being so far away from my family and friends. So with that being said, I hope you’ll continue to follow me in the blog world on our journey to Oklahoma. Also keep a look out for some great slow cooker recipes I’ll be posting in the weeks to follow! Until next time…