A Very Merry Christmas

MERRY CHRISTMAS! This year was especially fun with Tommy being old enough to participate! (...and not being in pain from delivery & nursing 24/7!)

We saw LOTS of Vic's family for Christmas. We did Christmas Eve at Vic's brother's house. We had the elf deliver our Christmas pajamas there this year. Here is Tommy cute as ever in his new jammies :)
Here is a little glimpse of how crammed & crazy it is with the Sutherlands. I always feel like I'm stepping on someone the entire time I'm there! This is 1/2 the kids dressed up to act out the nativity scene while his brother reads it from the scriptures.
Here is Christmas Morning. Tommy checking out his stocking. He instantly grapped the big toy sticking out, but it took some more coaching for him to check out the rest! I thought he'd be pretty excited I gave him a sucker cuz he loves them & I never let him have them, but Vic's stalking had oranges & peanuts in it & he went crazy over them! He grabbed an orange & ate right through the peel then did the same with a peanut!

My cute boys dressed up for PRESENT TIME!

Tommy has a unique way to open his gifts. I'll walk you through the

STEPS TO OPEN A PRESENT:

1. Jump & Climb all over it

2. Tear off the smallest pieces, peek inside, & try to play with it before all the wrapping is off! ...and then continue pulling off pieces little by little.

3- CRY because you are so impatient that Dad can't get the toy unattached from the box fast enough. (make sure to cry with EVERY gift for the same reason!)

4- DIVE into boxes no matter what there size is (even if your face is the only thing that fits!)5-EAT the packaging

6- Make a MESS of yourself

7- Find the garbage & try to make a mess.

and finally... PLAY with new toys!!! :)

And here is our happy little camper with most of his presents. He is CONSTANTLY moving these days so its hard to get a picture that he isn't in action!

...and then we went over to Vic's parents house for lunch and played games that made us laugh the ENTIRE day/evening!

...and games that made 3 grown brothers hold hands, so cute :)

I hope that all who read this had just as MERRY of a Christmas too!

We love all of you faithful readers and grateful for your friendship & comments. We've had a fun year sharing all our pictures and stories with you :)

Love, The Sutherlands

Cookie Monster Birthday Party

Tommy Turned 1!!! ... so of course I had to make a big deal of his FIRST birthday! :)

(See Whitney's 1st birthday party HERE)

The theme was "Cookie Monster" so here is the invite I sent out:

Here is the background/treat table that I made. It was fun to create, but everything I did took a lot longer than I thought it would, haha! Those tissue poms were a beast at first, but fun & easy once I got it down. I thought they made it feel really festive.

The decorations going counterclockwise:

**The balloons chandelier in the middle of streamers was so super simple, but had a big effect... I'll definitely be doing that again!

**The cookie monster hat was very time consuming so I only made one for Tommy & then put the fuzzies on the other hats. I'm so glad I didn't take the time cuz the little babies didn't want to wear them anyway!

**The silverwear wraps were fun to create. The tiny cookie on them is cookie crisp cereal

**The cups were made by googly eyes+ 1/2 a cookie glued on. They were so stinkin' cute & I thought it was funny cuz everyone at the party threw away their plates, napkins, etc., but no one threw away their cups... maybe they just thought they were too cute to throw away?!

** You'll really have to zoom to see the lollipops, but I made a really cute label for each of them.

** Then there is the birthday boy's chair

** Bubbles on the treat table were just to give to all the kids as they left since that is one of Tommy's favorite*The Food: We just had a bunch of subs from subway, fruit & cheese platter, & chips for dinner to make that part easy, but then I had to make these adorable treats (left to right):

**Cookie Monster Ice cream cake. It had ice cream sandwiches around the outside, oreo crust, & layers of white & blue ice cream that were cookie dough & mint.

**I got my entire idea for the party from the cupcake with the cookie coming out of the mouth. I thought it would be so fun, but I think he looked kind of gross, haha! I much preferred the simpler ones, plus they were way easier to make!

I wanted to give something to all of the adults as a favor so each family got a baby jar full of candy. The twist of course is that it had facts about Tommy on the label :)You'll probably have to click on the picture to read all the fun info :)

CAKE TIME!

Okay, well maybe not. Tommy hated everyone singing to him & started crying! I really thought it would be fun to do a cookie monster party because they whole point of a 1st birthday is to have the ceremonial 1st cake eating & I thought it would be so much fun to have blue & brown all over his cute little face. WELL, he licked the frosting & was done with it! We finally game him some blue jello and that mixed with the frosting made a little bit of a mess. Here he is after about 5-10 minutes.

GAME TIME: I had everyone watch a 5 minute slide show of Tommy's 1st year in order and then had them play this game. They had to put all of Tommy's cute little smiles in order from month 0-12. Most did pretty awful, including Vic, but Jimmy, a friend's husband only mixed 2 up! Then Katie, my sister did 2nd best, followed by his babysitter.

PRESENT TIME! I thought I was so clever making a simple blue bag/wrapping paper into a cookie monster face!

He really just wanted to jump all over the boxes, but I didn't want to bore his crowd so I felt bad forcing him to open them & rush from one present to the next! It will be fun on Christmas to take our time a little more :)

It distressed him that all the little kids wanted to take away all of his new toys so I thought it was time to roll out our main gift to him... a bounce house! He LOVED it! Here Jayda is falling on him, but he just thought everything about this was hilarious & fun :)

Here he is with all of his presents (trying to run out of the picture!) We're missing his big cookie monster & bounce house, plus it's hard to see some books, but for the most part here they all are. He came out pretty good & really balanced between useful & fun stuff.
Here is all of the CUTE PARTY KIDS! It was pretty much impossible to get them all in the picture & looking so this is the closest I got!

A picture of most everyone before it was all a giant mess later!! It was hard to decide who to invite cuz I didn't want it to be so big I didn't have time to play with Tommy at his own party nor did I want big kids running him over, but I thought it turned out perfect :) :) :)

Tommy's Birthday Part 2!

Tommy's party was on Saturday, but his actual birthday was on Monday. I felt like I needed to still do something for him on his actual big day & we had lots of leftovers so we threw an impromtu party with a few of our friends.
We didn't get a picture of him crying at the party, but when we sang "Happy Birthday" to him... he cried again so this time I got a picture, haha!

Waiting for their ice cream to be served:

TOMMY'S FAVORITE PART!

The few days before the party I started putting up decorations & Tommy was dying to tear them down so I thought it would be fun to let him help me clean up. He was in heaven when he realized I was trying to tell him that now it is okay!

After he pulled down the balloon chandelier he was so tickled pink that he went running back & forth with them bouncing around.

Look for that hidden GIANT smile behind the streamers! My happy ONE year old :) This year has been a blast. Tommy has the funnest-happy little charming personality that has just made my life SO much more blessed :)