Brycen's 7th birthday--first friend party

Brycen's birthday was last Saturday, but we were at a family reunion... So we held his birthday party today. When I sat him down to write his list of friends he wanted to invite, the first three people he listed were all girls. Then he decided on some boys to invite. We made the invites and passed them out. I laugh that he first wanted to invite girls because when we talked about what he wanted to do at his party, he said he wanted to do an "army theme". We ended up with 4 girls and 9 boys.
  Well, I talked him into having a "marshmallow war". I bought a stick of 1/2" PVC and Ryan cut it into 12" lengths for me. Then I measured about 3/4 C. of mini marshmallows for each kid and put them in a bag. I placed a dozen marshmallow blowguns and a dozen bags of "ammo" into a box. I wrapped it to play "pass the parcel"... When wrapping I lost count of how many times I wrapped it-- I ended up wrapping it 15 times. :P I had 13 kids come, including Tucker and Eliza. We played "pop the balloon" and I used balloons that had been blown up for a week... It was awesome! The kids had a hard time popping most of them. Some of the boys did full body dives trying to pop the balloons. After that we played "pin the deer". The kids had fun telling each other whether they were hot or cold as they got closer to the deer. Then, we watched Brycen open his presents, had cup cakes in an ice cream cone with ice cream on top. It was a nice easy clean up!
After cake, we passed the present and everyone got to unwrap a layer, including grandma Nay, and Brycen got to do 2 layers. During this time, Eliza got stung by a huge black bumble bee on the back of her neck. It was very crazy and unexpected, but she survived! Once the package was open all the kids got their shooter and ammo. They spread out all over our homemade backyard "war zone" and they shot marshmallows for probably 40 minutes. We had two casualties. Grace Chamberlain got hit in the eye, and Sariah Heaton was attacked by too many people at one time. Thankfully the tears did not last too long, and injuries were not severe.

All in all, Brycen seemed to have a wonderful first birthday party with friends. :)

2 Years Old!

Tucker turned two on New Years Eve 2010, so we had a little party. Instead of an actual b-day cake, we made individual brownies for everyone, served with ice cream and chocolate sauce.

As you can see, he was pretty excited.

It took a little while to get him to blow out the candles. He was very fascinated with the fire.

4th Birthday

My three year old turned four on July 27th, 2010. He wanted a spider man/spider cake this year with licorice legs. I wanted his cake to be red, but after almost a full bottle of red food coloring, I ended up with more of a pink cake than a red one. I decided it was okay because it had a spider web on it, and it was not a "girly" cake even though it was pink. Next time, I think I will have to go to a craft store or a specialty bake shop to find real red food coloring.
Despite my concern for the color, my son LOVED his cake. All the cousins enjoyed the licorice legs. Overall, I think he had a happy birthday! He loved his cake, got some fun gifts, and had fun playing with all his little cousins.
He's one year older and hopefully a little wiser too. ;)