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!

Caleb's Second Birthday

Caleb's past parties, continued:

Caleb's second birthday party theme was a no-brainer! He is our little handy man with an incredable ability to operate real tools. He always wanted to open things up to see how they worked and could actually get Brian's screwdriver onto a screw and turn it long before his second birthday! He didn't watch much tv at all, but when he did it was Disney's Handy Manny. He was Handy Manny for Halloween too! Unfortunately the show was so new that there were no costumes available and definetly no decorations...so I had to make them all again. I just got a colouring book (which they did have!) and traced out the show's characters, coloured them, backed them with paper and hung them up around the house. We moved Caleb's tool bench and tools into the living room, set up lots of table and chairs in every bedroom for extra seating and voila! He had close to twenty friends at this party, so it was another fabulously packed house and we loved every minute! We served up Mexican Lasagna and salad, since Handy Manny has latino roots, and played up on the fiesta colours! I couldn't find the file with the party invitation for this one, and Colleen did an excellent job on it too! I will keep looking and try to update the post later. It has Caleb as Handy Manny and everything!

Who wouldn't want the warning?

We put Santa to work too.

The favours. I made cookies from Mrs Portillo's bakery and fudge from Mr Lopart's candy store. I put them in wrappers with stickers that had the character's pictures on it with the name of their bakery/store. There were also Handy Manny stickers and stuff.

Some of my most excellent artwork....ha ha. I commissioned an unnamed artist to make a toddler sized cutout of Handy Manny...but it didn't work out. Nobody noticed. All was well.

The streamers looked so good last year that we did them again. Poor Brian. He still didn't understand why they couldn't stay up all month...again...Christmas decorations!

Where is everyone?

Not the fanciest cake but it did its job. My friend Heather saved the day with her excellent icing-writing skills!

A pretty good representation of the children at the party. You try to get them all in one spot at one time! I love that Trevor is playing and that Caleb is carrying around the crayon bucket!

I cut out letters and put them on the other side that said "Caleb's Workshop." This was the kid's construction project for the party. They coloured it. We still have it and Caleb loves it when we pull it out!

The birthday banner. It did survive!

Our birthday boy and his Pop! We love you Caleb!

Up Next: Caleb's Third Birthday, Dinosaur Themed

Caleb's First Birthday

So I have had a few requests for posts with pictures of Caleb's past birthdays. I promised to put them out this week as a sort of countdown until his Fireman party. I am NOT a Martha Stewart fan but I do aspire to be Martha Stewart-like...and while I know I have a long way to go, I really do put my heart and soul into the planning. We literally (by we, I mean me...later agreed upon by Brian) chose Caleb's first party theme while we were still in the hospital after he was born. We didn't find out his gender until that glorious moment when he was born and Brian said "Sweety, it's Caleb!" I remember holding him later the next day and deciding that our little man needed a Safari Party for his first birthday. I literally planned the whole year. I wasn't wishing away any of his first year, I just knew that such a precious treasure needed a big celebration! I didn't like any of the safari decorations available either, so I made our own. I don't have my brother's artistic skills, but I had so much fun doing this! There are a lot of pictures, you should all know by now that I am not good at editing down my photos...but everyone wanted to see a little something different about the party and I am a people-pleaser! I hope you enjoy this post as much as we did putting it together...it was a walk down memory lane! Wasn't he just the most adorable baby in the entire planet! SERIOUSLY!

Happy First Birhday Caleb!

My friend Colleen has done every single one of Caleb's invitations. She does great work and we love everything she produces!

Some signs on our walkway to the house...

...not like the kids could read, but I was counting on the parents to help out...

All of the kids got safari hats with passports attached (with their names on it). I was going to put the passports on strings to wear, but worried about the little ones and put them on the hats instead.

Caleb had 17 friends show up at his party with their parents in tow. It was a delightfully full house! I loved their favours and attached cute little tags to each box with their name on it.

We served some safari snacks: animal crackers, popcorn, safari animal-shaped sandwiches and cheese, a lion cake and gluten-free cupcakes with lion foot prints on top (chocolate).

Mom and I worked hard on this. I give Mom pretty much all of the credit for this one!

Brian put up the streamers and questioned why they had to come down a few days later (Christmas decorations!)! =) I also made a little picnic spot for the kids out of a green tablecloth: I podgied on some animal footprints that I cut out of black paper. It was cute but did not survive the party.

The following pictures are the wall decorations I made. They haven't survived either.

Note that I forgot to put on the ribbon arms and legs for the monkey. Oh well. Hardly anyone mentioned it...

I wanted to keep the kiddos out of Caleb's room, so since it was a Noah's ark theme, I made a game out of spotting the animals hidden around it.

Caleb's Base Camp. But it was freezing cold and mostly untouched as a result. Oh well.

I LOVE THIS PICTURE! Caleb just walked up and started to help himself to Mrs Angie's food! I trust Angie COMPLETELY when it comes to germs, so I was not worried...this still cracks me up!

We had a super fun day! SUPER FUN!

Up Next: Caleb's Second Birthday, Handy Manny themed!

FOUR YEARS ALREADY?

Okay, so Caleb's birthday isn't until Thursday, but we had his little family party today. The last four years have been nothing short of amazing and blessed. Caleb is perfect and we are in awe that God chose us as his parents! Thank you God!

Caleb chose a Lightening McQueen theme for this party and was so excited for everyone to arrive this morning. He kept asking us where they were and when they would get here. This birthday is different than any in the past because he has been living in anticipation of turning four! He has anticipated his parties and picked out the themes (next weekend is his Fireman Party!)! His enthusiasm is contagious, though ask any of my friends and they will probably tell you that I have never lacked in any enthusiasm for Caleb's parties. I love planning them!

This party was catered by Flo's Diner. Brian and I acted as her sioux chefs and kept the menu simple. Nothing says Route 66 diner food like hamburgers (grilled), homemade ketchup, ice-cream floats and french fries! Yummers! We topped it off with cupcakes: Caleb chose white cake with white frosting. Dad says he needs to be properly instructed in cake choice (as in...choose cholocate Caleb!), but our dude has always loved vanilla. Sorry Dad! I tried to get creative with the cupcakes and wanted to put them on his racetrack toy, to look like his Cars toys were racing. I am not sure if I really pulled off the look, but Caleb loved it and that is all that mattered...I did remember to turn the toy off so that we didn't have a cupcake pile-up!

Caleb had a blast and is now eagerly awaiting his big party with his friends next week. He loves his new toys but he will be the first to tell you that he just loved having everyone here with him. He still misses Chrystal and Shane and we think it is because they were here for multiple days...he knew they would still be here when he woke up in the morning and would play with him all day! Our little boy is as social as we are and that is a true blessing!

Happy Almost Birthday Little Dude! We love you!