Happy Penguin Party Ryan!

We celebrated Ryan's third birthday today in high style (though after realizing that our house cannot hold an infinite number of guests, I had to dial back the invite list and only include our 2- and 3-year old friends). He's been a fan of Happy Feet for a while, so I decided to make it a penguin-themed party.

My big idea was to make little penguin costumes for the kids - little black felt hoods with wings attached, and a strand of orange beads around the neck. I asked everyone to dress their kids in white shirts and black pants to create the full look, and I anticipated gathering all the birdies together for a group photo.

Unfortunately, it is the nature of 3 year olds to resist their parents' best intentions, so we couldn't actually get any of the "big" kids to wear it. Aunt Jane managed to wrestle Jack into it for about 20 seconds, but it doesn't have the same effect with the overalls.

Of course, without the costumes, it looked like a group of tiny waiters running around our house - I kept waiting for one of them to come take my drink order...

Eli and David

I had also printed out fish on colorful paper and planned to have the kids go "fishing" (like an Easter egg hunt), but they all found ample toys to entertain themselves.

Eli

Will

I baked individual chocolate-zucchini cakes with blue cream cheese frosting - I think Ryan was most excited about the gummy sharks.

l to r Aunt Jane; Turner, Annie and Brian Jensen; James and Andrew Zwyer; Jillian and Ava McGovern; Eli and Kristine Saperstein

Kyla Brown

The Jensens (baby Trace loves him some Negra Modelo)

Another vote for the gummy sharks!

More photos, including adventures in gift opening, here.