Three Weeks Later...

Jayna's 2nd birthday party was almost 3 weeks ago.  And trust me, I've needed that amount of time to recuperate before I was prepared to blog about it.  I'm still not sure I'm all *that* prepared, but we'll go with it.

• First and foremost, a wonderful time was had by all.  There was no drama (well, only a couple of small incidents that are hardly worth mentioning) and everyone ate, drank, rode a pony, got their faces painted and got a balloon animal...including some of the adults.  The weather held steady until about 45 minutes after the party ended.  And then it poured!  That was a true blessing because, as you could imagine, there was no "indoors" for a pony.  I could cram the clown and all the people in there, but not the pony.  Yikes.  Anyhoozy, we all had a blast.
• All the kids were angels.  No one had to be yelled at or put in time out or taken out back behind the shed.  I think there was so much entertainment that they barely had time to misbehave.  They played on the swingset and looked through their party favors before the clown and pony got there and then ate cupcakes and watched the gift opening.  After the gift opening it was straight back outside. 
• Jayna LOVED the magic show put on by the clown the most.  She liked her "bawoon doggie" and the Spongebob character that the clown painted on her arm.  She was okay with the pony, but daddy had to ride with her.  She loved her cupcake and wanted to sit down and play with/try on EVERY SINGLE GIFT SHE OPENED.  We really had to push through that.
• I made our canopy out back into a circus tent using a series of plastic table cloths, wire ties and red duct tape.  I have to say I felt very McGuyver meets Martha Stewart.  Oh...and I couldn't have done it without Aunt Mary's help!!  Thanks Aunt Mary!!  We put up the circus tent on Friday night and then it rained like cats and dogs until Saturday morning which caused the entire circus tent to fill up with water and partly collapse.  I had to do damage control just one hour before the party, but I saved the day and all was fine.
• The cupcakes were made to look like little bowls/bags of popcorn like you'd get at the circus.  Aunt Mary came over Friday and helped me decorate the cupcakes.  Thanks again, Aunt Mary!!  This was the first time I'd made these popcorn cupcakes, so I did learn a few lessons along the way.  All in all, the cupcake tower was outstanding and I was very proud of it.
• The favors for the kids consisted of clown noses and wigs, circus themed tattoos, twisty straws and a sucker.  The wigs were worn for a short time by most, but we did have just a couple of kids who wanted to live in them.  Sooo cute!!

And now some pictures.  If you click on the collages, they will increase in size so you can see all those tiny pictures.  I made the collages so that you could see more pics without me having to spend 3 hours uploading all 200 of the images that I edited to print. :)

Thanks to everyone who came and celebrated with us!!  To those of you who couldn't make it, we missed you and hope to see you next year!  Happy Birthday, Jaynie!