The Adventures of Allygator and Samster the Hamster: Allyson's 2nd Birthday Party

Ally's 2nd birthday was a My Little Pony party. We tried something different this year and had her birthday at 3:30 in the afternoon and just served appetizers and desserts. We always get invited to our friends kids birthday parties along with the ones for children in our small group so this year I thought we should try inviting everyone to Ally's. So because of this we had a large number of people in attendance and I didn't want to try serving a meal because I thought it would take a) too much time and b) cost more then I really wanted to spend on food.

For food we ended up having probably more then we needed for a 3:30 get together. I did veggie pizza, taco dip, hummus, vegetables, pretzels, fruit salad, and a funfetti cake dip with vanilla wafers and animal crackers.

We let people snack as soon as they got to our house and actually we had guests arriving before Sam and Ally were even awake. So once we had a few people there we went ahead and woke up our kids to come down and join the party.

After snacks we went ahead and let Ally open her presents. It was pretty low key event, however we probably had the largest amount of people in our house that we have ever had and Ally wasn't so sure what to make of everything. We had a very hard time getting her to open any presents and she kind of wanted to be over in a corner and not the center of attention. We ended up having all of my family there, Paul's family (minus those in Texas) and our small group along with 2 sets of our friends and their kids so it was very much a large gathering for our house. However, we were able to get her to open a few presents so we could get some pictures.

After presents we went straight to cake and ice cream. My mom bought her My Little Pony cake and we ordered ice cream from Oberweis. Again, she got pretty nervous during the singing with everyone staring at her, but she loved being able to blow out a birthday candle.

After getting everyone cake we just socialized and hung out with everyone until they needed to make their way home for dinner. Looking back on it I did not enjoy myself as much as I would have had it been a smaller event. We tried having family and friends and I really just did not like it very much. I felt like I was so busy making sure everyone had what they needed that I couldn't focus on Ally and enjoy the moment as well. Not to mention I hardly got any photos and the ones I did get are blurry and out of focus so I am not thrilled with that either. I just felt like I was split so many ways with so many different groups there that I couldn't give attention to anyone and really missed out on relaxing and just celebrating with Ally on her birthday. Next year I will most likely go back to family only and then invite friends to the park, etc. and see if they want to play that way.

Before bed we did a photo shoot in front of our My Little Pony backdrop. Ally was in a crazy mood and laughing up a storm so there were too many cute shots to just add one!