On Monday our triplets turned 2 years old!
To celebrate we had a beach party. Sun, sand, water followed with balls, cupcakes, lollies, family and friends. Yep, by the conclusion of the day I had happy and tired children.
We didn’t have to pretend that we were having a beach party – we were really at the beach! It was a long weekend – the triplet’s birthday fell on Queensland’s Labour Day. We were staying at my family’s beach house in Bargara because I had a school reunion in Bundaberg on the Saturday night.
A beach party can be a perfect opportunity to keep things low key. Although, perhaps my mother would not agree with me, since she did a lot of the work while we were over at the beach with the kids! God bless her. (Love you Mum!) Unfortunately due to a severe lack of shortage in the fridge, I was unable to prepare the salads in advance. Although Mum looked pretty tired by the end of the day, I think she was happy to compromise to be salad chef if it meant not going to the beach. Mum hates the beach – particularly the sand! She always has. It would appear that little Imogen Jennifer – Mum’s namesake – didn’t inherit Grandma’s abhorrence of the sand. She loves it and spent the majority of her time at the beach building sandcastles!
But truly, it was a very easy birthday party to pull together. Which was great, because when you are away from home, you really don’t want to spend your entire holiday doing party preparations. The schedule was simply have the guests arrive, allow the children to have a quick play and the triplet’s open their presents. Slap on swimwear and suncream, eat an ice-cream and walk across to the beach. After playing on the beach, we returned home, ate cheese and nibbles, drank wine (adults) and soft drink for the kids (and non-drinkers!) then had a BBQ lunch simply with steak and salad for the adults and the kids had sausages (and mainly opted out of the salad, rather having sausages on rolls). Dessert was the birthday cupcakes. Easy Peasy!
The triplets with myself and my two sisters. |
It was also simple because we had a small guest list. Although anything with my family is not small, since my sister has a lot of kids also! My mother had come to babysit my children on Saturday night and my 2 sisters came, one stopping in on her way home from a holiday up north with the family and my baby sister and her boyfriend drove from our home town. Also, my best friend (since year one) came. Katrina, Kylie and I all have five kids apiece. Just because we are wonder-women. Kylie had her two eldest missing, so altogether there were 13 children. I’m fairly certain the neighbours are grateful we don’t live there every week. The children had a lovely time playing together.
I had a few games in my head that we might be able to play if we needed to. (In case you were interested, I thought we could do “Throw the thong” (Americans, please don’t gasp, in Australia, a thong is footwear, as opposed to the more raunchy thongs you have!) The person who threw the thong the longest distance would win. Sandcastle building competitions. And sand races. However, I didn’t need to do any of this. I was correct in assuming that the children would keep themselves occupied. Not only did the children stay busy, so did the men. We were hanging out in the bend between the ocean and a lagoon. There was a natural rock formation there, but at the start my brother-in-law started throwing rocks onto it to force the water to flow to a particular area to make it faster on the boogie boards.
Before long the other two men started to get involved in the project. By the end, they were so engrossed in their ‘work’ that they were carting huge boulders from all over the beach to ford their little part of the outgoing tide!
The kids also took interest in the project and used their boogie boards to cart rocks over to Uncle Adrian who was chief engineer. I think it’s safe to say, they spent a lot more time building the wall then they spent cannoning through the inlet!
Apart from this, there was lots of swimming.
Playing in the sand.
Squirting with water bottles.
Playing with balls.
Chatting mothers.
Boogie Board fun.
And just general beach fun!
The triplet’s were so tired by the time we got home that we actually gave them a sandwich and then let them blow out their candles and eat their cupcakes.
The boys are completely mesmerised by the candles. Immy is just struggling to stay awake. |
So much so that when Toby stole Immy’s, she dissolved into a puddle of tears.
Which was pretty well an indication that it was naptime. They completely zonked out for a couple of hours. (They would have slept longer if their cousins and friends weren’t playing enthusiastically on the same premises, but the triplets were happy enough to rejoin the fun!)
In order to keep it simple, I had chosen cupcakes. Not that it turned out as simple as I planned, because the oven wouldn’t work. So I had to find a time that was convenient and drive to Kylie’s house to bake them. Only to discover the next day that I simply had been pressing the wrong combination of buttons, and in fact the oven did work. Oh my, oh my. (She blushes at her own stupidity.)
To keep with the beach theme, we had tiny teddies hanging out on the beach, stretched luxuriously on their beach towels (sour straps) under an umbrella. Complete with dolphin swimming in the water!
The party favour that the children took home was a ‘beach ball’. (Although for most it was just a ball, netball, soccer, basketball or otherwise.) The kids all had a play with them before they went home. They were so excited to get them!
But the best part of these favours (in my opinion, not the kids) was that they looked great as decorations! Especially hanging some beach spades and buckets up before we went to the beach.
I can’t believe I have three two year olds now! I am so incredibly blessed to have each one of them in my life. Happy Birthday Toby, Jayden and Imogen!
I’m linking with Essentially Jess today.
6 Comments
What an incredible day! Your images and your words really show how much fun everyone had. Happy birthday to your beautiful little ones! I’d be overwhelmed with three two year olds,but you seem to be juggling it all amazingly xx Josefa #teamIBOT
What a fabulous party! It sounds so simple and fun – the perfect party! I loved your idea of balls as party favours, and including them in the decorations. Fabulous! Oh – and your kids are gorgeous!
What a fun day you had, Happy birthday to those gorgeous triplets and congrats to you for getting through those 2 years, I love the idea of the ball as a party favour very clever.
What an amazing mumma you are!! I have just one two-year-old and he’s a handful – but I think it’s because his two older siblings make him get into more mischief!! Happy birthday to your babies and ‘birth’ day to you!
I love how you just did little things to give it such a fun theme! The balls look awesome hanging up like that, and I think I will steal that cupcake idea sometime
Wonderful day! Wonderful memories! Wonderful family!