TIM & JEAN: March 2012

My firstborn is four years old. FOUR! I still can't believe that I'm a mom, let alone that I have a four-year-old. BAAAAAHHHHH!!!!

Anyway, Weston's birthday is "technically" on February 26th, but because February 26th was a Sunday (not to mention the Oscars), Tim and I sorta kinda just pretended that his birthday was on Friday the 24th instead. (It's nice when they're little and don't pay attention to calendars.) And what a super-extreme-mega-birthday it was!! Tim took off work, and we had buttloads of fun. More on that...!

First, during the week leading up to his birthday, I came to preschool with him, in part because it makes him so darn happy to have Mommy there, and in part because I wanted to bring cupcakes for all the kids.

Weston has two sweet teachers, Miss Amanda and Miss Vicki:

And there's my little fella, actually looking attentive, which is nice:

Cupcake time!!!

Incidentally, I believe that this picture was taken AFTER the extreme-cupcake-enthusiasm had already passed:

Moving right along... On the night before his "birthday," I snapped this photo, which will be added to his Birthday Bedhead collection. (I realized that I'm not going to be able to get morning-bedhead photos of him until he's like 12 -- is that when they finally start sleeping in? -- so for now, I have to take them late at night instead.) Anyway, he's such a sweet little dear. :-)

Like I said before, Weston's birthday this year was a super-extreme-mega celebration. We started off with doughnuts from Banbury Cross for breakfast. Then, we drove south towards Chris and Adrienne in Provo. Naturally, we needed to eat lunch somewhere, so of course we visited the birthday boy's favorite restaurant ever: McDonald's. (Seriously. It's his most beloved, most coveted place on the entire planet Earth. Chick-Fil-A is a close second, but McD's takes the cake because they have actual TOYS in their kid's meals, rather than books.)

Sorry, Cole. No Happy Meals or play areas for you yet. But I have a feeling that the McDonald's obsession will rub off on you soon enough.

What a goofy little ham!!

Next we dropped off Cole with Adrienne (THANKS, LADY!!!) for Part 3 of the birthday extravaganza: SNOWTUBING at Soldier Hollow!!! Tim and I were especially stoked about this part of the day, partly because we SO enjoyed our previous snowtubing trip with my friend Lauri years ago, and partly because we KNEW Weston would absolutely love it. When we told him the plan, however, (Weston being Weston), he immediately balked and was adamantly against anything involving mountains, because his ears hurt from the pressure and therefore he hates mountains. :-) That's our Weston!! We endured a lengthy spell of screaming through Provo Canyon on our way to Soldier Hollow and a whole lotta anger and stubbornness about this unknown "snowtubing" thing. But when we arrived, he FINALLY got excited and decided that he was okay again. (That was after we put a hat on his head to "cure" his ear pain. Duly noted.)

There was a whole frustrating thing when we tried to get our lift tickets, but it would be boring to recap, so I'll just move along. We finally got checked in, and IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!!!!! AAAAAHHHHH!!!!! Boy, did Weston have it easy. He sat in his tube almost the entire time, while Tim pulled him over to the lift, and then the lift took him up the hill, and then I pulled him over to the run, and then he slid down the run, and so on. Hahaha! But it was good fun for all of us, and I think Weston enjoyed doing an activity with just Daddy and Mommy.

SO FUN!!!
Anyway, after the snowtubing, we left Soldier Hollow, raced back to Provo to pick up Cole, and then raced back to Salt Lake for the birthday party at 6. Our friends, the Petersons, actually beat us to our house just barely, haha! We cut it THAT CLOSE! (Whoops!) But, we made it. We didn't have time to stop at Costco to pick up pizza like we'd planned, but we just ordered in from Papa John's instead. Phew!

Weston had a great time with a bunch of his buddies:

Nom nom nom!

And then we played games! First the kids played Tim's version of "Pin the Tail on the Donkey," which was entitled, "Pin the Proton Torpedo on the Thermal Exhaust Port." The kids loved it, and I applaud Tim for his excellent Death Star:

Next we played a Shark Attack game, where the kids walked around an "island" (blanket) to music, and then when the music stopped, they had to jump onto the island so that the "sharks" (grown-ups) didn't catch/tickle them. That was cute and, as can be expected, very rowdy. We finished with that old game where each kid unwraps one layer of wrapping paper from a present (receiving a Ring Pop in the process), and then the final gift is actually a bunch of party favors. Yay!

And then it was present time!!!

And finally, the piece de resistance... BIRTHDAY CAKE!!!

Yum.

Overall, it was a fun party and a terrific day. Getting a bunch of kids together is always a bit like herding cats, but fortunately there were a bunch of grown-ups to help out. I think from now on, we might do Weston's birthday parties OUT of the house, just so that we don't have to worry about the messiness and the clean-up, and we can enjoy ourselves more with the partygoers and parents rather than spend most of our time wrangling kids and running everything. (Weston's February birthday means that we have to be indoors every year, but Cole is easy because he has a May birthday. Party at the playground!!! Haha! Done.)

After everyone had left and everything was cleaned up, Weston had some quiet time with his sleepover buddy Jane, along with Chris and Adrienne, where he got to dive into one of his new toys from me and Tim: