What I learned from Gabriel's birthday party

Taken the morning of the party, he is already so excited he won't sit still for a picture.

The cake.

He has his new dinosaur t-shirt on I bought for the party.

We threw another backyard birthday party for Gabriel Saturday. Even with only inviting immediate family, Godparents and kids, and our few neighbors that we're really close to, the guest list turned into 21 people. A few couldn't make it, but it still seemed like a lot of people. We followed the same idea as last year and set up the ping pong table in one corner of the yard, and added a croquet course on the other. The new swing set proved to be pretty popular with the kids.

Everyone seemed to have a good time, especially Gabriel, who is our little party mingler. He greets each new arrival with a big hug. He never stops moving, and goes from one group of people to the other to see what every one is doing. He sometimes will stop mingling and join them for a little while, but then he's off to the next grouping. The thing I'll remember most (besides the things I have listed below), is the look of pure joy on his face when everybody sang Happy Birthday to him, while he sang right along with us.

I, however, did not have as good of a time as I did for his birthday last year, and was very upset when it was over (probably due to complete and utter exhaustion). After giving some thought as to why, here's what I have learned from this year's party:

10. The minute I finally have time to relax a little and maybe even play some ping pong or croquet, everybody's ready to go home.

9. My dog apparently doesn't like the way my uncle moves around. He was a new addition to our guest list this year since he now lives here instead of Fredericksburg. We're very happy to have him with us, but he moves very awkwardly due to his strokes and we couldn't get Molly to stop barking at him and had to lock her up in the garage. She's never done that to anyone before.

8. The kids love it when it's pinata time, but I am starting to hate pinatas. Last year my niece almost got whacked in the face. This year it was almost Gabriel. For a few seconds I thought he had been hit. This was the point where my blood pressure got up so high I could feel it, so I went to lay down.

7. Planning a sit-down meal instead of just snack foods when you've invited more people than your table holds is a big mistake, especially when it's too hot for anyone to want to sit outside. Which leads to...

6. Apparently late September is always going to be hot, or at least the day we plan Gabriel's party will be. What happened to our 75 degree highs from mid-week?

5. No matter how much planning we do before hand, we are still scrambling to do tons at the last minute, and are busy throughout the party. It's very frustrating to realize the party has ended and I got to see very little of it going on. I have to piece together what happened by watching the video.

4. Small doses of family are good and welcome at this point. Large doses are bad. Just very bad.

3. Never attempt to throw any kind of party when you are 42 and 7 months pregnant. Your hormones and nerves do not understand the concept of "party time" at this point.

And the things that kept me going:

2. I value my husband's patience and willingness to jump through hoops more and more each year. And I think I might lose it without his sense of humor and ability to calm me down.

1. No matter how much work it is, how many things seem to go wrong, or how exhausted you are afterwards, if Gabriel had fun it was all worth it.

And he did! (More pics to come).