Caleb's Third Birthday

And finally, Caleb's third birthday! I

 spent a lot of time planning this party, but I have to be honest, I was not able to do everything that I had envisioned. Last fall was really hard. We were dealing with a lot and were stretched very thin emotionally, so we had to scale back on the party in order to actually survive the party. So even though it turned out FANTASTIC and the dude was in heaven, I have a hard time looking at the pictures without seeing everything that isn't there. I am so grateful that we had his party though, it was a big, bright light of fun in a very difficult time! What a beautiful reprieve and distraction! There are a lot of pictures for this one..hope you enjoy them!

Caleb's invitation by Colleen. I am telling you people, she does great work!

Caleb has a lot of toy dinosaurs. A lot. They came in really handy for party decor.

My attempt at a triceratops. I drew it onto several pieces of posterboard and attached it to a box so that she would stand up. I wasn't overly thrilled with the result...the body is rather odd. But again, I need to focus on the dude and he loved it. I also wanted to have the jungle paper cover our entire living room wall with another few dinosaurs, but there just wasn't the time or energy that year.

So we made the fireplace into our jungle and enlisted the help of some more of Caleb's dinosaur friends. The footprint you see was one of several velociraptor prints that I put on the floor leading from the door to the scene (I got a template from an actual velociraptor print).

The hanging pteranadons were our favourite part. They spent the rest of the year in Caleb's playroom and just migrated into his bedroom. He loves those dinosaurs. I just wish the whole jungle scene looked better. The tree was a great attempt by my Mom, sister and myself. Looking back, I probably should have taken down the picture, but it felt wrong to make baby Jesus leave the party...

The awesome "birds."

The first time I bought a party-store centerpiece, but we liked it, especially our dude. Caleb LOVES the balloon, so Brian still has it pinned on the wall of our garage.

Calebosaurus Cafe served:

Velociraptor Nests (spaghetti and meatballs)

Brachiosaurus Bites (pj&js cut into brachiosaurus shapes)

Fruitosaurus Salad (I think that explains itself...)

Volcanoes (pop...I know...I was stretching it by the time I got to that one...but I thought it was kinda clever...)

Lava Juice (juice boxes)

Dinosaur Eggs (hard-boiled eggs that looked like dinosaur eggs)

Pteranadon Yummies (cake and ice-cream)

Herbivore Delight (veggies)

Dinosaur Bones (pretzels and cheese)

T-Rex Tidbits (pimento cheese sandwiches)

The look on Caleb's face is all we needed. It didn't matter anymore what I thought of the decor but because he was OVER THE MOON!

Favour Boxes. I just bought the multi-coloured boxes and added stickers and name tags to each one. They all got dinosaurs that roared, dino stamps and tatoos, stickers and dino poops (malt balls in a bag). The babies got those cute little soft dinos off to the sides.

One of our sidewalk signs that I drew (and used the cricut).

The sign on our door that I drew.

The hard boiled eggs. The camera doesn't show all the lines that well. I boiled some eggs and then rolled them until they were all cracked. Then I soaked them overnight in green koolaid. When I peeled them in the morning, the eggs had all those green lines on them that looked like dinosaur eggs. They looked better in person.

The bounce house. A big hit. It belongs to a friend of ours and the kids LOVED it. This year it was actually nice enough outside for the kids to play out there!

An activity table with dinosaur colouring books, puzzle and books. It is my parent's kiddie table. Isn't it cute!?!

Caleb's AWESOME cake! I ordered it from a friend at bible study and she did a great job making our vision happen. We love how the dinosaurs are eating the cake!

Super cute right!?!

This was my favourite one. T-Rex really got his hands dirty diving into the cake!

I bought small glow-in-the-dark dinosaurs and put one each in a bunch of plastic easter eggs. We hid them around the yard and told the kids that a mommy dinosaur had just laid all her eggs. They got to go searching for them and take their finds home.

Our dude. So precious and perfect. We are so excited for his party this Saturday. He wakes up every day and asks if it is his birthday yet. When best bud friend Trevor came over yesterday, he asked Caleb if he was four yet (which is still a bit of a sore point...). Our dude very bravely told Trevor that it would be four more days. What a champ! He can't wait!