It's Party Time!

Over the weekend we had the first of Andrew's birthday celebrations.  His actual birthday is on Saturday (the 30th), but last weekend we met my aunt, uncle and cousins at my grandma's house to celebrate our Christmas that got postponed due to the weather, and we tied Andrew's birthday into the celebration!

  

Here he is with his 2nd cousins, Kolton, Kelsie and Kendra.  Andrew loves these guys so much!  He always looks forward to playing with them.  They are so good to him and they all play really nicely together.

 

Andrew adores Kolton.  He loves tackling him and wrestling on the floor!  Ha!  Kolton is so sweet and puts up with it all!  He always wanted a little brother and I think he feels like he has one when Andrew is around to bug him!

 

I can still remember the days when my cousins were all born.  Kolton was the 2nd grandchild after me on my mom's side.  We are 25 years apart!  When he was born I felt like he was my kid, too because I just loved him so much!  Now it is so fun to watch Andrew interact with them.  They live near Clear Lake, so we often get to see them in the summers and go boating together, which we all enjoy and look forward to.

 

Andrew was so cute when he opened his presents, as usual.  He is getting kind of used to this present thing!  This was his big bag of Christmas gifts and he loved reaching inside to find all sorts of treasures from his great grandma.

 

Have you seen these adorable little Johnny Tractor sets?  They are John Deere tractors but in a play set. This is the farm one.  It is just adorable and Andrew loves it.  My uncles think alike because they both bought him one!  Ha!  When Andrew opened it he immediately said "Oh WOW!"

 

This is a little cleaning pail of Sesame Street characters.  Now that's a gift after my own heart!  Ha!  I've already taught Andrew how to clean the floor with them!

 

 

Then he wanted to take over Kendra's present- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs!  Well, actually he only wanted the Dwarfs!  She was so sweet to share with him.  He kept lining them up and singing "Hi Ho!  Hi Ho!"  This is him saying "Shhhhhh" because "Sleepy" is trying to sleep!

 

I just had to post this picture because I cannot get over what a big boy he looks like here.  Look how tall he is!  He is actually wearing 2T jeans! (Stef, those are Logan's jeans! lol!)  I can't believe he is going to be 3 years old already.

Happy Birthday Elmo!  Elmo sings a little birthday song and Andrew loved it.  He danced and danced!

He kept saying "Happy Birthday Andrew!" to himself.  It was so funny.

 This was the first time Andrew has really understood that it was his birthday (he's going to think he has 2 birthdays a week apart! Ha!) and he got all shy when we were singing to him.  It was so cute.  He kept looking around at all of us, wondering what we were singing to him for!  He loved his cake (mommy made it!)

This is also the first year he understood how to blow his candles out.  He got 2 out of 3... not bad!

Preparations are underway for his big party this weekend.   We're having about 25 family and friends over for the big celebration.  I've been working hard on planning and organizing.  My mom keeps telling me I don't have to do so much, but I love doing it.  His past 2 birthdays I've either not been working, or working part time, so I had lots more time to do little extra touches for the party.  This year it is a little tougher to find the time, but I found I've almost gone more all out for this one than in the past (I blame it on the 6 snow days we've had)!  It is one of my favorite things to do- deck out the house and create little sections related to the theme all around.   I love to decorate the night before the party so when Andrew wakes up in the morning he sees all the decorations everywhere!

 

I made this poster for our front door.  He helped me pick out what characters to put on it.  These are all his favorites!  Every year I make posters to hang around and decorate.  You'll have to wait till Saturday to see the rest!

 

Right now our guest bed looks like this!  I have everything set out for goody sacks, decorations and food.

 

Here is his pile of presents wrapped in Sesame Street paper, of course!

 

I've worked really hard on the goody bags this year.  It's been so much fun doing this!  I am telling you, this takes talent!  Ha!  They've given me a few headaches but for the most part I like how they turned out.

Every year it has been a tradition to get him one big balloon of the character related to his theme.  This year I am so excited because Andrew is getting 5 huge balloons!  A while back they had a display at our grocery store and Andrew went nuts.  I told him for his birthday we could get some balloons.  So I went a little crazy.  They were all on sale and I got a great price, and I figure, he deserves it!  After everything he's been through and has yet to go through, it will be so worth it to see his face light up.  Besides, you can't just pick one Sesame Street character.  There are so many!  Ha!

Besides, we think turning 3 is a pretty big deal!

Check back this weekend for more birthday fun!