Happy Birthday Jesus!

It's that time of year again! Time for our annual Birthday Party for Jesus! I started this tradition with Lucy and her friends when they were 18 months old. This was our 3rd year. We've added more kids and more chaos, but it just adds to the fun! This year was special because we combined the party with the Merry Larry party I won from houseparty.com!

We got sent an awesome kit full of goodies to share. It had the Merry Larry and the True Light of Christmas DVD, a Veggie Tales Christmas CD, plates, cups, napkins, silly bands, stickers, tattoos, and some fun face masks. I had a blast incorporating Bob and Larry into our party.

Lucy helped me fill the goodie bags a few days ago:

Then we decorated:

Lucy picked out the pink tablecloth. Haha.

I got pretty good at drawing Bob and Larry faces!

Yes, I drew all those faces. Please admire my incredible artistic ability! ;-)

We made some delicious dairy free cupcakes. (Recipe here. I substituted earth balance butter.) Lucy helped me make toppers with the stickers from our packet.

Since our party was at 9 am, we had breakfast!

Please forgive my horrendous photography skills.

In the past couple years of doing this, I've learned not to make the food super elaborate. I'm not much of a cook, having a lot to do stresses me out, and the kids don't care! This year, we had amazing dairy-free baked French Toast. I'll post the recipe soon. It had to refrigerate overnight, so I made it last night, then stuck it in the oven this morning - perfect! We also had sausage, grapes, and bananas. That's it. Easy and delicious!

Finally, all our friends came over and it was time to party!!!

This is what a group picture with 11 kids looks like. Haha. This was the best of many.

Trying on the silly masks.

After breakfast, we had craft time. I'm always looking for some kind of craft to reiterate the real meaning of the season. I found this one on pinterest. 

It was an awesome free download!

Luke, Justin, and I spent an evening cutting out all the pieces, and Lucy put 9 popsicle sticks and a gluestick in each bag. 

It was a little too time consuming for the little kids who just wanted to get down and play, but it was fun for a couple minutes. Haha.

Afterward, I read the nativity story while the kids acted it out with their puppets:

Finally, we got to watch Merry Larry and the True Light of Christmas!

In the movie, Larry and his friends work together to help an old lady who lost her house. The theme of the movie is service, so we decided to do a little service project of our own. Next week is national collection week for Operation Christmas Child. They're pairing with Uncle Si from Duck Dynasty and Merry Larry from Veggie Tales to reach kids all over the world!

Click Here for more Information

We wanted to do our part, as well, so everyone brought a couple little things to put in our shoebox. Look what we ended up with!

So thankful for generous friends!

We ended the party by singing Happy Birthday to Jesus, blowing out his candles for him and digging into those delicious cupcakes!

Thanks everyone for coming out and having fun with us! And thanks houseparty for the goodies!! Happy birthday, Jesus!