Karsten's birthday party

We had Karsten's birthday party today. His birthday is still almost 2 weeks away, but we shared it with his good friend, Sam Miller, who turned 4 two weeks ago.

We had the party at our neighborhood park and rented a jumpy castle and had hot dogs and cupcakes. The invitation list got a bit long and we ended up with about 80+ parents and kids RSVPing. Honestly, I was starting to freak out a little bit as the RSVP list was growing. I was not really worried about feeding everyone or having enough cupcakes, but thinking about keeping 40-50 kids occupied and in a safe manner for 2 hours between a jumpy castle and the playground, which was right next to us. A friend joked that this was not a birthday party, but a carnival.

I tend to live by the motto "Expect and worry about the absolute worst, and be pleasantly surprised when it turns out better". And that is exactly what happened. We did have a large crowd, but the kids were great and we brought a bunch of bikes and trikes and scooters and the kids rode them around the basketball court. We also brought balls and bats and some of the kids played ball. The bubble machine pooped out about 30 minutes into the party, but was helpful for a little while So, it worked out well.

Karsten and Sam had a great time. Instead of gifts, we collected new or gently used books for a local elementary school book drive that our church sponsors twice a year. We got a ton of books for them and the kids are excited to bring those to church on Sunday.

Here are a few pictures from the "Sam and Karsten Birthday Carnival".
The birthday boys: Karsten and Sam
Karsten and his friend, Chance. This is Karsten's most recent attempt at cooperating with picture taking.

This is Peyton's most recent attempt at cooperating with picture taking. Her smile is almost painful looking. I hope she outgrows this soon. It is getting really hard to get a good picture of her unless she is really already laughing.