I have really been neglecting our little family blog. My last post was July 1st - yikes. That's by far the longest I've ever gone between updates. The summer and fall were so busy and so fun (Canada! School starting! Gwennie's first bithday! Halloween!)... A LOT to eventually catch up on, and I think I'll do that over the holidays. For now, while it's fresh in my mind, I wanted to share our big boy (really big - 4 seems unlike a toddler and so very much more "big kid") and his fourth birthday celebrations.
He's been into pirates for awhile now, which stemmed from his love of the Disney Jr. show, "Jake and the Neverland Pirates." I wonder if there will ever be a time in my life that I won't be able to sing the theme song on demand! W was a pirate for Halloween and also wanted to keep that theme for his birthday party. I decided this year that it would be fun, for the first time, to have some little friends as well as our families. I'd heard somewhere that it's a good guideline to use the child's age as the number of little guests, so we had 4 "big kids" including William, and not counting two baby siblings :)
Here are William, Jack and Sarah doing a little fish craft while everyone arrived:
There was a treasure hunt, with clues read by Daddy (wearing an eye patch), complete with a "walk the plank" challenge, and Captain Hook's ring toss game. The kiddos liked it even more than I'd hoped and it was so cute to see them tearing around the house excitedly finding red "X"s and the next clue.
(Side story: William had helped me dye paper earlier in the week in coffee to make some cool aged-looking pieces for the clues, and when I tried to burn the edges for even more effect, I caused a LOT of smoke and the alarms went off. Oops! He also informed me, since - lucky Mommy - fire safety week at school had been recently - that I should NOT be playing with matches!)
At the end of the treasure hunt, there was a "real" (brought all the way from Boalsburg by Nanna & Grandpa, thank you!) chest out on the front porch with little goody bags for the pirate partygoers. I love how 3, 4, and 5 year olds are completely thrilled with a pouch of fake gold coins, Mardi-Gras-esque beads, shark fruit snacks, etc. It really made the day fun to see the little buddies running around together. They were wild and had a ball.
Esch and I were a little nervous about how William would do with all of the excitement - he was SO wound up the morning of the party - and how he would be with other kids playing with his things, etc., but he was such a good boy! Whew. The little guests could not have been sweeter, either - gathered around, happy and excited, while he opened his gifts.
This robot toy from Nain & Taid was a crowd pleaser!
Did you notice that William is wearing different shirts in these photos? He had THREE different shirts on during the course of his 2-hour party due to spilled drinks :) Maybe he isn't QUITE a "big kid" yet! :)
Our poor buddy still has his egg allergy, so the skull portion of his skull & crossbones cake was his special eggless one, and everyone else had red velvet cupcakes. The day before his real birthday, we'd taken him out to dinner (Red Robin, his favorite) and the waitstaff sang a special song and brought him an ice cream sundae. He was a VERY big fan of the whipped cream and cherry on top, so we also had sundaes as dessert at his party. He was pretty happy about it. :)
(Thanks to Liz for taking pictures for me!)
Really not sure how it's possible that we can now say we have a four year old son. He's changed so much in the last year. He's got a "girlfriend" at preschool (more to come on that in a future post! it deserves its own!)... oh my. We love you so, so much, little man. HAPPY birthday!
