So the girls' b-days are two days apart. Coming up with a mutual party theme? Easy. Every nickname, it seems like, that Bobby gives his girls has a monkey in it: monkey, monkey girl, monkey-tron, etc. So monkeys, it was.

I couldn't help myself- the brown and yellow color scheme was too tempting. So I made about 18 brown placemats and embroidered each child's initial. It made the table pop. If you couldn't tell, I'm a little obsessed about entertaining.


This was the baby station--for Johanna and her posse: Isobel, Genevieve, Owen, you know, the book-reading, mommy-caring, non-walking/kinda walking crowd. They had a monkey puppet and lots of monkey books.

This was a popular spot, apparently, since Caroline kept ending up over there. Maybe it is because her favorite Curious George books here there.

We played monkey games...


Ate lunch that Bobby sweated over.... parmesan chicken fingers, fruit juice jigglers, chocolate covered bananas, and roasted sweet potato wedges, and had cake.
Then opened presents...










And thanks to Amy for the incredible monkey dresses she made for the party!


It was a fun party... thanks to everyone!

So the Shiffler household has made some major changes: we got rid of our TV--unorthodox, I know. Yeah, so the Comcast cable guy came to get out cable box from us and kinda stared at us when we said we weren't just getting rid of our cable package, but local TV, and the TV itself. But the decision has been great. We didn't watch much TV to begin with and now with our iMac, we can still watch movies from time to time and are more focused on what we choose to watch, if we watch anything at all. And what we save on cable monthly, we can put towards a selective family library of Planet Earth-type DVDs and the like and, oh, yes, the Wiggles.

Above: Caroline mesmerized by the Wiggles and Johanna, distracted....

Johanna a little disinterested...

"Oh wait, I think I could get into this Wiggles-thing..."