Jack's Family Birthday Celebration (AKA the Great Big Pile of Presents)

I always request "no gifts" when we have birthday parties for the boys to limit the piles of wrapping paper trash and duplicate gifts [in fact, the one gift we received from a parent who ignored the request was a Thomas busy book that we have TWO of already!]. I'm not a total Scrooge (even though I might like to be) so we saved the gift-giving for our family birthday celebration. 

This is the sight that awaited Jack when we arrived at Grandma and Grandpa's house tonight:

Funnily enough, it was the Wheat Thins that drew more of their attention.

Jack was being really reticent about the whole presents/birthday celebration again, but a giant singing/croaking frog card from my Aunt Jane and Uncle Ken piqued his interest.

Grandma and I both wanted Ryan to feel included, so she got him a book and I found a great alphabet puzzle ($2 at the thrift store - woohoo).

Jack still didn't want anything to do with presents - here he is in his "chipmunk hole".

Finally we lured him into the kitchen for some snacks and then forced him to open presents. He got into the groove pretty quickly! Here's a wooden vehicle bead stringing set I picked up (also $2 at the thrift store!).

While browsing Craigslist a while back, I stumbled onto a listing for a lot of Thomas items - shirts, toys, playsets, etc.  I forwarded it to Nancy as a birthday suggestion, since it was a really good price and some things I wouldn't normally buy for him (anything battery operated, for instance!).  He was actually really excited about the T-shirts:

Of course he had to identify all the train characters for us!

A fews weeks ago I started to clean out our collection of board books, but when the boys saw the Sandra Boynton books, they insisted we keep them. Later at the library, Jack and I found two new Boynton books we hadn't read, Tickle Time and Green Hat, Blue Hat.  Jack though they were hysterical, so I suggested to Aunt Sarah that she could get them as birthday presents.

She wasn't able to find Green Hat, Blue Hat, but found another one we didn't have either - But Not the Hippopotamus, which is also adorable (Jack is more excited about it that this photo would suggest).

In a shocking turn of events, she also picked up a Thomas sticker activity book.

More Craigslist booty:

A birthday card from a preschool friend:

Finally we decided to take a break from all the unwrapping to eat dinner and have birthday dessert. He was a little more successful blowing out his candles this time.

Then it was on to more presents!  Grandma Nancy works for Scholastic Book Fairs, so there's almost always guaranteed to be a nice book (or three) in any gift pile.

Another set of T-shirts and PJs from the Craigslist score.

Ryan realized the frog card croaked the Happy Birthday song, and pointed out that we should have just opened the card instead of singing to Jack.

My last non-Thomas gift was a set of Tegu blocks - little building blocks with magnetics embedded in them. Lots of opportunity for creative play in a compact package.

Finally the grand finale - two Thomas Take N Play sets.  We had watched some really funny video reviews of the Shark Exhibit set on Youtube and the boys thought we needed to run out and buy it for our house, but I was not eager to spend more money on a different size Thomas playset (since our basement is already full of the wooden set).

Enter the Craigslist posting - it contained not only the Shark Exhibit but also the Dieselworks, and the boys were sufficiently over the moon about having their own sets.

One last surprise gift - Grandpa had restored the old metal Tonka crane that Sam played with as a child. He was able to order replacement parts online and make it like new (except you can't buy new metal toys anywhere...).  Ryan was particularly thrilled with it and they couldn't wait to find some dirt to dig in. It will make a nice complement to the Tonka dump trucks we have (though I foresee some sharing issues as there is only one!).

Edited 9/19/13 - Jack's door opened at 5:45 a.m. this morning and instead of crawling into our bed like he does when he wakes up early, I heard little feet padding into the kitchen to play with the Shark Exhibit.  I took my sweet time getting out of bed, but the second I appear in the kitchen Jack demanded "the big truck with the digger on it!"  As soon as Ryan woke up he headed out into the garden to dig. I guess it was a successful birthday!

Jack is THREE!

It is so hard to fathom that we are no longer a household of babies or even toddlers now!  We've got two independent little men, who are very vocal about what they like and don't like (usually more of the latter) and who amaze us every day with their observations about the world around us. 

Jack's actual birthday is 9/17, but of course it's always easier to have a house full of people on a Saturday.  This was the first party where we included Jack's friends from school, so there were even more kids and parents than usual. 

I never flinch at inviting our entire contacts list to Jack's party as we can just open up the back door and send everyone out on the patio and into the yard. However, we've had record rainfall in Denver this week, so the yard and garden are quite muddy. That didn't stop the 2, 3, and 4 year old boys from charging out to the playset - we just had to provide a few bags to transport muddy shoes home! 

Mercifully, the sun made an appearance for a few hours so it was good to get out and warm up before the afternoon clouds rolled in again. 

As usual, I took more pictures of the food than the guests, but there are a few of the birthday boy and his friends. 

Acting every inch a 3-year-old, Jack selected a really remarkable birthday ensemble (refusing to wear his Thomas T-shirt, of course! Please, Mother, that is SO predictable).

I relied on Pinterest and Amazon to help flesh out the theme, and Jena loaned me their Duplo Thomas and Friends train set (which caught the eye of all the little boys; they were all uniformly disappointed when I or their parents pointed out that it was just for decoration and not for play). 

I may have gone a little crazy with the alliterations... (I didn't do Mavis' Melon as originally planned, and Gordon's Granola Bar Bites didn't turn out - stupid almond butter). 

 

These wraps were so good, and super easy to make - spread cream cheese on spinach or whole wheat tortillas, layer ham or turkey with lettuce and sliced red peppers - DONE. 

I am always surprised at how much my (and other) kids love black olives (and they don't even try to put them on their fingers!).  This "coal car" was pretty much empty by the time all the guests left.

The pretzel rods represent "Jobi wood" - a special lumber harvested on Misty Island. It's a Thomas thing - you wouldn't understand (unless you've watched as many Thomas episodes and read as many Thomas books as we have!).

I love the idea of fruit and cheese kabobs as there is then no need for plates or forks, but the thought of assembling them all didn't get me too excited - so I took the lazy route and made a DIY kabob bar!

 Train-shaped PB&J, of course!

Jack's teacher Miss Ruth came to the party, which made him really happy - but she also brought a helium balloon, which sent him right over the edge of excited. 

 

Adorable Kyla, who is only 4 months older than Ryan but about three inches taller! Also shown, watermelon agua fresca in my favorite party cup - 1/2 pint mason jars with paper straws and custom paper lids. No trash as the straws and paper goes in the compost bin and the jars get stashed away until the next party!

It's obvious there were toddlers present as the big box of Thomas train engines and cars was almost immediately lined up in one long train.

Friends from school - Dean (orange hat), Kai (green shirt), and Jack's new "bestie" Fritz (orange shirt). Lots of parents overseeing lunch!

Kai spent a good deal of time "mowing" the lawn (the constant rain prevented Sam from mowing it for real before the party, so Kai had plenty of grass to work with!) and parked it nearby when his mom called him up to eat. Mason is one of the few kids who played with the trains - there were too many other distractions...

...like the playset!  David, Andrew, Sebastian, Eli, Anna, Ryan and Katherine didn't let damp grass or soggy wood get in the way of their climbing and swinging.

 Atlas (blue hat) enters the fray.

Sorry, Dave - you didn't actually want to talk to other adults, did you?  The girls pretty much insisted on constant swing pushing - "Higher, Daddy! Higher!"

Then it was time for cake!  I used the last giant zucchini harvested from our garden to make Chocolate Zucchini cupcakes (and a slightly bigger cake for the birthday boy) - just the perfect level of sweetness with no artificial anything and moist enough that no frosting was needed (while I love to cook, I am not a "food artist" and my cake decorating attempts would be more likely to appear on Cake Wrecks than Pinterest - plus all that fondant - gross).

Jack was a little overwhelmed by all the goings-on, so it was a good thing Grandma was able to provide a snuggle. I just love all the kids clamoring to help blow out the candles!

Jack recovered enough to eat his cake, naturally.

Look at that little devil!

 

Picnic at Chicago Creek

Today we decided to take a picnic up to Chicago Creek on Mount Evans with Grandma and Grandpa Fleming and Aunt Sarah. It has been raining a lot lately so the creek was more like a raging river (very rare for this late in the summer in Colorado!). It was crisp and cool in the trees and everyone enjoyed the fresh air.

Again, they chose to dress alike - I had nothing to do with it!

The boys were excited to discover a mushroom growing between the boards of the picnic table.

Ryan was fascinated by the tree that had been upended when the creek eventually eroded the dirt around its roots. It was a pretty shallow root system for such a tall tree!

Of course we had to find treasure while we were out adventuring - this geocache was tucked into a rock crevice on the side of a steep slope.Jack and the Flemings stayed up on the trail while Ryan and Sam and I went discovering.

We drove on farther up the mountain - it was the last day you could drive up to the top of Mount Evans so the line of cars turning off was long and it was naptime, so we just headed home over the pass.  Our little mountaineers pooped out quickly and slept all the way home.