Emma's birthday "day"

I'm going to be doing a lot of backtracking for a little bit, since August is such a busy month for us.  Our anniversary is Aug 6, Em's bday is Aug 17, and Ethan and David's is 6 days later on Aug 23.  And the most recent addition to our family, Todd (my brother in law) had his birthday Aug 15.  So, August is crazy for us.  Crazy fun.

We had a special family celebration on Emma's actual birthday.  Started the day off with some yummy dunkin donuts for breakfast.  Then we gave Emma her birthday presents from us- her 1st tricycle and a sand/water table!  She is obsessed with the tricycle, or as she calls it, her "bike".  After breakfast Jared took her out front to try it out.  She kind of figured out pedaling, but still needed a little extra help from daddy.  The trike has a retro style bell and streamers on it that add to the fun.  If you are looking for a good, durable tricycle, I would definitely recommend this one.  It is a Schwinn roadster.  I read a lot of reviews of different ones before purchasing one, because we have a lot of kids and I want things to last through them all.  Or at least a couple of them.

So then we all headed out to the McWane Center.  This was our first time going, and I thought it would be a fun, (air-conditioned) activity for the whole family.  Emma had a blast.  She played with the bubbles and in the playground area.  We all really loved the lower level with the fish and the sharks and sting rays that you could touch.  David was pretty fascinated with the sharks.  We were running out of time, so we made a quick stop by the dinosaurs and then went upstairs to let her play with some of the fun things up there- giant piano and blocks, etc.  Ethan was amazing the entire time- stayed in the stroller and just chilled.  Poor David (he's a mama's boy) wanted to be held for the last half.  It was great fun, though.

The rest of the day we let Emma play with her sand table and watch Tinkerbell.  What a fun 3rd birthday!  We love our Emma so much, and I am very thankful for her.  She has this joy and happiness inside her that I know must be a very special gift from God.  I love her giggles and her dimples and her bright, contagious smile.  She makes us laugh everyday.  She makes my heart happy. :)  

Eli's 1st Birthday Party

One of our best friends' little boy, Eli, celebrated his 1st birthday last Saturday.  It was a really hot day, so they had a giant blowup water slide outside.  Emma was too little to get up the slide by herself, but she had lots of fun splashing in the water and Jared helped her go down the slide a few times.

It has been a long time since I've made a "big" cake, but I really wanted to do something special for them.  There is no way I would have been able to do it without Jared's help!  He entertained Emma while I worked on it.  There wasn't really a theme to the party, so they told me to do whatever I felt like doing (Jared was sure to tell them that it was a My Little Pony cake :)).  I've been seeing tons of these giant cupcake cakes and I have always thought they were so cute.  They actually even make a giant cupcake pan now, but I was not going to spend a lot of $$$ on a pan I'll only use once.  Anyway, this is how it turned out.  The cake was vanilla buttermilk and there were matching chocolate cupcakes to go with it.  I may not have the time to make lots of cakes anymore, but it is fun when I can spend a little time being creative with cake :)

This boy can put down some cake!  He demolished the entire 5" smash cake in no time.  There was absolutely none left!!!  Only crumbs on his tray!  I was so surprised!  Emma hardly touched her smash cake.