Happy Birthday, Holden!

Holden turned 4 on Wednesday, and we celebrated with a few new friends today.  It seems that the kids have high expectations for birthday cakes based on past experience, so Holden requested two cakes in addition to cupcakes for his class.  We settled on an Optimus Prime cake for the family on his actual birthday and a pirate themed cake for his party.

The pirate grandparents contributed a lot to the pirate theme.  Holden got a toy ship and a pirate set for the bathtub.  

Chocolate cake with modeling chocolate waves and ship.  As I coated the cake with buttercream, Holden wanted to know where the pirate ship was.  He wanted to  make sure his cake order was fulfilled.

 Jello topped with orange pirate ships

Thanks for the banners, Nana, and the tablecloth, Grandebbie!

Pirate's Booty seemed to be the perfect snack for a pirate birthday.

Fruit on pirate sword picks

Holden usually doesn't like a lot of attention.  He hasn't enjoyed the hustle and bustle of his past birthday parties, but he really got into it this year.  He dressed himself up and asked for his picture to be taken.

 Some neighbors and a classmate from preschool joined us to celebrate.  They decorated balloons to look like pirates, put on tattoos, and went on a treasure hunt.

Intro to Scouting

Robert and Joseph spent all day Saturday at a day dedicated to introducing boys to Scouting.  Joseph got to try out archery, shooting bb guns, fishing, making water rockets, and more.  He thought it was pretty awesome.  He said that the thing he liked most was that it was just boys.  Robert said that he has a whole new perspective on Scouts now that he has experienced it as a parent and owes his dad a big thank you for taking him to Scouts when he was young.  It seems that Scouts attracts a lot of characters, Joseph included.  We'll see how the overnight trip next month goes.

Proof that all three can get along at the same time...

Budding Creativity

Robert and I aren't the most gifted artists.  The only thing we can really paint well is a wall.  So, it's pretty fun to watch our kids experiment with mediums that let them show some creativity.  We've noticed that all three have picked out ways to create things lately.

Holden really likes his set of magnetic shapes.  They are easy for his three-year-old (almost four) little fingers to manipulate.  He's pretty good at figuring out how to arrange the set shapes to make new things like rocketships, traps, forts, and a collection of diamonds for Mommy.

Lena has always been creatively inclined.  She took art classes in New York and requested to take more in Alabama.  Luckily, her elementary school offers one weekly.  She usually likes to work with clay or three dimensional mediums that she can sink her hands into, but she was very pleased with how her watercolor turned out.  You can't see it well in the picture, but she made the tail feathers of some of the larger birds very detailed.  We set up a board in her room where she can display all of her work.  

Joseph has a more ordered mind, so he likes to take an engineering approach to creating things.  After looking at instructions on how to create a fort or castle using a kit, he adapted the materials to make the fort that he had in mind instead of the one pictured.  He was very proud to have made it all by himself.  The black tube in the bottom right is a cannon he made out of a toilet paper roll.