We have lots of birthdays

The force is strong with this one...

This time last year, Hannah was keeping her legs crossed and hoping that Reuben and Harriet's birthdays would not fall on the same day.  

She did her best, but with Reuben and Harriet's birthdays being only 6 days apart, and Reuben's always seeming to fall in the middle of the Easter Break down here (when everyone - including us - is off making the most of the last of the good weather) we look set for a few years of 'multi-party weekends'.  This year Reuben's birthday fell while we were on our way back from a camping trip to Hawkes Bay.  He opened his presents in the van, and got to defeat Darth Vader with his new light saber before breakfast.

Six days later, it was Harriet's turn.  She didn't understand the fuss of course, but enjoyed the sight of candles and ripping into some wrapping paper.

After the birthdays, came the parties.  Reuben said he wanted just a few of 'the guys' around for a sleep over party.  Essentially this boiled down to me taking them the the beach - run around lots, the park - run around more, Kiwi-yo (a frozen yogurt bar) - no running, but a fair bit of rampaging, and back to ours for pizza, a movie, popcorn, and oh yes - lots of rampaging, before 'bed' - or at least 'bedroom'.  

Actually they'd rampaged enough that they did all get to sleep at something approaching a reasonable time, and I opened some wine!  Hannah had avoided most of the rampaging by arranging her latest choir concert to be the same weekend, so she was off rehearsing.  Luckily, we'd managed to swap one of 'the guys' for Tilly, so she was having her own sleep over down the road and there was one less small body in the house.

Anyway, we evicted the last of the guys by 10am the next day and cleared the decks before Harriet's guests started arriving at 10.30!  Luckily, 'rampaging' doesn't really apply to a group of peri-one-year-olds, more of a steady writhing.

The kids seemed happy though and the adults had a nice time.  Duty done - third child will have documentary evidence that we did indeed mark the anniversary of her arrival - even if she's woefully neglected the rest of the time. Oh how we, the 'third child', suffer.

And finally, here's birthday girl in her new bike helmet off for her first ride with Daddy and loving it.