The Vance's: Let's party!

For Simon's 1st birthday party I decided to have a circus carnival theme. It was so fun prepping and thinking about games, decorations and food!

I hung up a wall of pictures from the past year. I always love looking back and seeing how little he was and the kids were so excited to see them and remember some of our favorite Simon moments.

Lots of red, blue and yellow for our carnival! For food I kept it simple with fruit, veggies, animal crackers and popcorn. I wanted to do caramel apples but Matt brought me back down to reality and reminded me that 15 young children with sticky caramel was probably a bad idea. So caramel dip was perfect!

For games I thought of my favorite carnival games and tried to recreate them in the backyard. I ended up loving how it turned out and the kids had fun walking around the yard trying them all. I really liked how all but one of them required no supervision, just the kids playing. It was nice for them to replay ones they liked and for the adults at the party to sit back and watch.

The kids loved Pin the Hat on Simon!

Grandpa and Grandma Vance!

And me with the birthday boy. It's so hard to believe he's already one!

My partner in crime. Back a few months ago when I started thinking about Simon's party I put a very unrealistic plan in my head about how the house/yard would look. And somehow Matt exceeded those expectations! He spent hours weeding, mowing and fixing up the yard so it looked great for the party. I really couldn't have done this without him. He never once complained about spending his nights working around the house. I'm pretty lucky.

Our kids were ready to party!

We had 15 kids for the party, so many great friends came to celebrate.

Instead of face painting I opted for a tattoo station. Much easier to manage and way less creepy (I'm not a fan of face painting at all!). I also had a guessing station to guess how much candy was in the jar, a ping pong in the basket game and the play structure ready to be played on.

It turned out to be the perfect day. The sun came out just in time for the party so we could spread out inside and outside all afternoon.

I usually rely on Pinterest for most of my ideas but this one I came up with all on my own. Blow up a big picture of Simon, cut out his mouth and use it for a bean bag toss game. It all sounded so cute in my head. Until Matt finished cutting out Simon's mouth on the poster board. So scary! We were cracking up thinking about how many nightmares these kids would have after seeing this. But then Carter loved it and thought it was the greatest thing ever so we just went with it. Still, not at all what I envisioned! Ha!

Lucy and her best friend Ava played together the entire time. Lucy is usually surrounded by boys (all boys in our neighborhood, all boys at church, all boys for play dates) so she gets so excited when she can spend time with Ava. They are only 5 weeks apart and are the cutest little friends.

Most of the Vance boys!

And then the special surprise.....a carnival isn't complete without cotton candy! Instead of making cupcakes for everyone I chose a smash cake for Simon and cotton candy for the big kids! I hired a local kid who runs his own business making cotton candy at parties. He's 13 and did an amazing job! The kids were in awe and just surrounded him to watch him spin each cone of sugar. And....he went crazy. The most enormous cotton candy we've ever seen! Each kid was LOVING it and the sugar rush came on pretty quick!

Simon loved watching it all too!

Bigger than her head.

Gigantic.

Crazy kids!

More games....with kids full of sugar.

I love that one of my best friends lives only 15 minutes away. After living together for 4 years in college and then having babies just a few weeks apart it's so fun to get together and celebrate. Katy and I can go months without seeing each other and always just pick up where we left off.