Now we are prepping for round two, hosted here!  What?!  Here?    Ack!  Needless to say I am wee busy.   Here are some cute craftiness, linen napkins folded in a fan, tied with ribbon and raiding the scrap-booking drawer.  Napkin, place cards all in one.

My dining room table can fit six very well.   Ten not so much. so yeah, that is a card table with a lace tablecloth and china.

Now back to work.  Sigh.

All of these pictures were taken by people other than me.  They were ripped off of their facebook pages for use here.

It was a night of all things 80’s, including me–who was born in 1980.

There were many friends in their 80’s best.

Many children hopped up on sugar.

LOTS of sugar.

Many dishes with lots of continental variety.  (sushi by BiL)

And lots and lots of fun.  Thanks everyone!

My grandparents renewed their vows–and teared up while they were promising to love each other forever.  We all teared up actually, if anyone did not tear up they were not listening closely enough.   (Oh, that guy in the middle is the new guy I told you about.   He could not possibly be more different than the old guy–but that is okay.  He is exactly what we need right now.  The only thing our church needs now  is to dump a few hundred ugly plastic covered chairs, but that is an entirely different post–one my husband will delete as soon as I  write it– so never mind.  Back to the wedding. )

It was perfect.  Small, simple, and sweet.   Every party guest was able to fit at one long table.

We used my Mom’s china, crystal, and silver.  There were antique lace table clothes, and linen napkins purchased in Ireland.  Then JHJ and I drilled holes in defenseless baby pumpkins and jammed flaming candles in them.

Colorful fall leaves, and a few gumballs were scattered about to keep the organic/fall/classic look that my Grandma wanted.  Nothing says elegance like yard waste!

I was originally going to use acorns for the place cards, but the gumballs worked so much better!  Some day I will tell you about why these pokey little suckers were the bane of my existence as a child.  It may this month–there is a lot of Mo left to Po.

We did candles in crystal to deflect the light everywhere, and added fresh greenery stolen last minute from the yard.  Not shown is the arch we put up that they got married under…it was okay.  The pictures left me feeling very lackluster about it, but no one said anything but nice things so either there were only polite guests or I am being a perfectionist again.

We did little vignettes at important places and I never once regretted having not bought a single flower.  The leaves and pumpkins, gumballs, and candles were plenty.

Of course the cake was made by Stacey.  Only the leaves and little acorns and pumpkins were fondant.  The rest of all that detailing was done in (incredibly yummy) buttercream.

Yum.  How cute are they feeding each other–with forks!?  I looked in their album and they used forks for their first wedding too.  The Husband and I used our fingers to feed each other cake at our wedding–but then all of the guests were barefoot at our wedding too…so yeah.

It was a great night.  And look, you can’t even tell that my mom has a BROKEN BACK and that she had worked all weekend cooking.   She is awesome at that stuff.  I kinda want to be her when I grow up.  Oh, and look at the toys on the floor.  Certain family members lost interest around the second course.

One more thing.  See that glass my grandma is toasting with?  My Great Grandparents got it as a wedding gift, and used it at their wedding, my grandparents used it at their (original) wedding, and The Husband and I used it ours.  My great grandparents were married for 79 years,  and these two are already at 60, so we have some big wedding shoes to fill.

When I started The Huckablog 20 months ago I was bored.  And lonely.  And needed a creative outlet.  I loved blogging.  The thing is that I still love blogging.  But I am involved in other things now, and I am not lonely, and am certainly not bored.  This is my official excuse for why if my blog was my baby I would have had CPS called on me by now.   NEGLECT!

I am going to try and catch up with all of the life that has been happening all around me this week, so stay tuned.

In the mean time–I SWEAR these are the last of the birthday pictures.  The party was over.  Almost all of the guests were gone and The Son was playing with his new toys.  Remember back here when I told you about his guitar obsession?  Grammy and Grandpa bought him a guitar.  One that has to be tuned and stuff.  Uncle JHJ bought him a harmonica.  ShoeShe, who was taking advantage of our super comfy couch as a bed that night, pulled out her guitar and there was a jam session in our living room.

Honestly, it was my favorite part of the night.  The Son now sings ” I am a C.  I am a CH.  I am a CHRTEM!” every time he plays his guitar.

They nicely share a burger.

They let the grown ups chat and eat.

They get out their wiggles in a healthy manner.

They even share new swing sets nicely.

They maybe take turns with the one basketball (which is really a dog ball, shhh!).

And then someone gets hit because of a beach ball, even when there are more beach balls than guests.  And, a certain birthday boy spends three minutes of his party in time out.

It is not just The Son, even H, one of the sweetest three year olds I know, has problems with sharing every once in awhile.  Who could blame him! Look how cool Herbie is!

Presents were opened–and put away to prevent further sharing problems.  I love my kid so much…but I know him and his special toys and what happens to the person who tries to play uninvited.  And, we want to keep these friends.  More on the guitar later.

Oh goody, more cars!  I swear we could open a line of dealerships.  Except he keeps removing all of the cars’ tires.  I am now extremely proficient in hotwheel tire care.

And, here we have Sweet Baby G, and my MMiL, in a photograph I like to call  “A Hint.”  She does look nice holding a baby girl.  You had better get on it BiL.

Remember how I said this was the last birthday post?  I lied.  There is one more, called the after party jam session.

From left to right: Nigel, Max, and Herbie.

Max is my Dad’s much loved little show car.  He wins lots of trophies, so I guess he is really good.  There are thousands  of Herbies in this country, but this particular Herbie was actually commissioned by Disney to promote Herbie Fully Loaded. That is apparently a really big deal, but we just liked that he was a Herbie and owned by a really nice lady whom I had never met, yet charged us ZERO for Herbie’s appearance.

My baby loves Herbie.  I told him to go look in the driveway and he RAN outside and straight to give Herbie a hug and a kiss.

Then he said “H! You can give Herbie a hug now!”  H was like….this is abnormal, but okay I guess.

Driving (and by driving I mean sitting behind the wheel and making car noises.) Herbie was the highlight of the day for a certain little boy.

That is my Dad and MMiL in her patented don’t let the baby fall out of-on to-down from pose.  I would tease her about it if she weren’t right.  Exhibit A can be the scrape on The Son’s Head he got from falling off her deck yesterday.

I have no idea what that face on H is all about.  Neighbor? Any ideas?

More people and cars.

Do you like his birthday shirt?

Aww. That is face I love H! Much better.

They were trying to figure out how they all could be buckled in.

This is K.  He is a doll.

There is a really great story about K and his family, but I don’t think it is my place to share it.

And that’s it,  one more day of party pics coming, and we will move on to the beach!

No one comes to a three year old’s birthday party to be impressed by the food, right?  I doubt it, so we kept it really simple.  Burgers, chips, fruit salad, baked beans, and of course the cake.   I did not really get a chance to eat until after the party, but it sure tasted good to me!

Balloons, streamers, ribbons, and pictures of a photoshopped, number three Herbie.  Easy Peasy.

There were only three children invited;  four including  The Son.  Adults do great eating off of  their laps, but three year olds, not so much.  For the kids table I moved his little picnic table inside and Herbie-ed it up.  Here it is with the take homes for the kids… a picture of the guest of  honor Herbie, Crayons that were also Herbie-fied, and the coloring books I made.  I searched online for pictures of Herbie that could be made black and white, or already made coloring sheets (found here, but we never got our autographs so whatever.) I did some detail work on the front and back in publisher and had it all printed at my favorite-in-there-every-week copy shop and Voila! Custom coloring books.  They turned out cute, but some of the images were kinda pixellatey.  I went in to this project thinking it would be cheaper than goody bags full of plastic crap and candy, but honestly–they were kinda expensive because of copying costs.  The cover was card stock and all of it was on a larger than normal size paper so it could be folded and stapled in the middle.  I am not sure I would recommend this take home–goody bags would have been so much easier.

More decorations. Oh, notice the paper plates and cups.  I HATE paper cups and plates, but they were SO MUCH EASIER to set out and clean up.  Sorry Martha Stewart and you know, THE EARTH, but I may be a convert.

The Son loved these so much that I did not take them off of our light fixtures until after we got back from vacation.

Herbie confetti.  Yeah I know. Overkill.

Balloons were everywhere, these were our second batch.  We had unfortunate popping and deflating issues with the first batch.

The only decorating I did outside was designating spots for the car show, balloons on the mailbox, and red and blue stripes and a three on the front door.  It was cute!

I was really pleased with this party’s look.  It turned out great, was easy, was unique and fit my kid just perfectly.  Next up is the car show portion of the party.

There are so many details I love, and the ONLY one I came up with is to have Herbie be the number THREE car instead of FIFTY-THREE.

How cute is the bumper?   I hated to even put candles in it, much less eat it.

Can you see the side mirrors? LOVE THEM.

Last year he needed help to blow out the candles.  Not this year!

Oh NO! It is…wait for it….HERBICIDE!!! You can thank my Dad for that one.  Now you know where my sense of humor comes from.  The Corn does not fall far from the stalk.

In case you were wondering, it was chocolate and it tasted as good as it looked.   Yum.  Every single crumb was eaten.

We had talked about how he was going to be a big boy and do big boy things after his big boy party for over a month.  The night before we talked about how in the morning when he came to my bed I would let him nur-nur but then that was all. No more.

The Husband grabbed the camera and got a few shots of the last session.

It was sweet, but not as sad as I thought it might be.  I let him nurse as long as he wanted, but it was really only a few minutes.

His party started at 10:30 and I still had to decorate and pick up the cookie cake and wash glass pitchers so we did not lounge around, but got right up and went to work.  That may have made me a teeny bit unhappy, but why drag out the hard stuff (are you a quick Band Aid ripper? I am.  The Husband wants to take them hair by hair.  I bet a psychology major could write a whole thesis on personality traits and band aid ripping.)

We had a milk and cookie theme for his big boy party.  Our homemade ice cream fell through–but in the end the milk bar was such a success I was glad we did this instead.

Before I cut up the cookie, I read off the list of Big Boy things that The Son gets to do now and everyone cheered for him.  Man, do I ever love those people.

The Milk bar included cow, goat, soy, rice, and hemp.  None of the Huckablogs liked anything but the cow, but my sweet Hippie friends found some cool new ones they enjoyed.  I put out tiny Dixie cups so people could try just a little.

One should always invite Shoeshe to parties like this.  Her creativity is invaluable.  I asked her to label the different kinds of milk and she gave each one a tag line, “Goat gets my Vote”, or, “Hemp not for a Wimp”.

I did just enough decorations to make it seem special.  A little crepe paper and some signs was all.

I posted this sign on the door of the fridge, feeling very much like Martin Luther.

I also hung up This letter.  It made my fellow nursing mamas all cry.

Then the kiddos all played on the Big Boy Swing Set that has been destroyed by weather TWICE this summer.  It is still not complete, but it is slowly getting there.

Then he opened a couple of Big Boy themed gifts, like hard puzzles and easy reader books and that was it.  All of the cookie was eaten and I sent all the non cow milk home with the LLLadies.

After the party The Son was tired so Shoeshe and I laid down on his bed with him, and she read him some stories. When she was done,  he looked up at me and said,  “Mama? Can I nur-nur?”  “No, honey, you are a big boy now.  All of Mama’s milk is gone.”  “Well, can I try?” “Nope, sorry.  But I will lay here with you for a while.”

I was REALLY glad Shoeshe was there right then.  I think her support kept me strong.  He went to sleep for the first time with me at home not nursing – ever.

When he woke up we took him to Build a Bear to make a big boy treat.  I told him he could get WHATEVER he wanted.  He made a dog whom he immediately named Philbert and refused to dress him.  “Dogs don’t wear clothes Mama!”  We got out fast and off cheap.

Then we had Sushi and came home and that was it.  His Big Boy day was over.

Since then we have had to talk a few times about how he is a big boy and can’t nurse, and he has said he wanted to be a baby some, but quickly changes his mind when I remind him of all the things he would have to give up if he were a baby.

I have had a few minutes where I really just wanted to get him to sit still and cuddle, and felt a little sad, but really it has not been too bad at all.  I was having more, “Man I want to be done” days than, “I love nursing so much” days for a good six months, so I sorta feel relieved.

There have been two weird things.  Even though he will only whine when I say no for a few minutes, he BEGS to be able to “rub your nur-nurs Mama!” Um.  Yeah.  LLL assures me this is most normal, but it seems a little squicky to me so we are having to definitely set some limits there.

The other weird thing?  I put big Band Aids over my nipples so that if he climbs into my bed while I am asleep he can not latch himself on.  I could not find plain band Aids so Cookie Monster was guarding my left breast and Big Bird was protecting the right.  And now my son hates Big Bird and Cookie Monster.  I imagine his future shrink’s 401K is thanking me.