Caleb's 9th birthday camping party

Caleb is 9!  His last year as a single-digit.  As usual, he's been saying that he's "almost 10" since about 2 days after his birthday but he did slow down long enough to enjoy a nice party.

He started the day with a little surprise from us -

We decorated his door with a curtain of streamers and filled 9 balloons with money.

This was a little too easy for him!  Next year I need to fill a bunch of extra empty balloons so he has to hunt for the cash!

He was begging to open presents so we let him open his gift from us - a secret agent spy watch!

After that it was on to the party prep!

Caleb wanted a camp out party, but being early March you just never know if it will be 65* and sunny or 10* and a blizzard, so we went with a camp-themed daytime party instead.  Some of the party details -

We used Caleb's bed quilt to cover our dining room table for the cake display and trail mix bar and accented it with outdoorsy decorations from his bedroom, as well.

 The cake design was chosen by Caleb, and not a bit of it was homemade!  It just about killed me to put it together (being the relative cake-snob that I am!) but it saved me a bunch of time and he REALLY wanted it - donut holes (cringe!!), fruit roll-ups (double cringe) and all!

It did turn out pretty cool looking.

 

One of the party favors was a scoop-your-own "Trail Mix Bar".  The kids each got a cup (small deli soup container covered in matching paper and personalized with their names).  Inside the cup was a small flashlight and headlamp set for each boy (home depot clearance after Christmas).  The boys then filled the cups with a variety of cereals, candies, crackers, dried fruits and marshmallows to make their own trail mix.

I had planned several games and such (scavenger hunt around the neighborhood, etc.) but Caleb nixed every single one of them!  He said he just wanted to go to the park and play football instead of any organized games.  Uncle Larry and Matthew helped me corral the boys and led them in a game of football while Mike stayed back to light the camp fire.

When we returned from the park it was time to roast marshmallows and make S'Mores.  We set up a S'Mores bar with 4 different types of chocolate (plain Hershey's, "Cookies and Cream", toffee and peanut butter filled), 2 flavors of graham crackers (regular and chocolate) and 3 flavors of marshmallows (regular, chocolate and chocolate-mint) and had extra long bamboo skewers for the kids to roast them.

I made the mistake of just telling the kids to choose  a few pieces of chocolate/marshmallows and letting them fill their own plates - not a good idea.  Caleb's chosen parties at the rec center pool for 2 years in a row so I had forgotten just how, umm... wild a group of boys can get!  Unlike the dainty little girls at Sophia's Sweet Shop party who took just a few pieces of candy at a time, the boys all ended up with way too much chocolate and marshmallows.  Lesson learned - next time any such sweets will be doled out by a grown up!

Once they loaded up, it was outside to roast!  Mike lit a fire in our chimenea and also built a camp style fire-pit in the rocks so there was enough room for everyone to roast at once.  I wanted to just borrow a metal fire bowl from a neighbor to make it easy but Mike decided to make his own spending many hours arranging rocks.  A ton of extra work but I admit it did look awesome.  He wasn't happy when I made him undo it the next weekend.

Look!  There's actually a picture of me for once!  

Chocolatey face - the sign of a great S'More.

The excessive chocolate grabbing led to some extra excited kiddos.  Yikes.  I almost didn't want to let them back inside my house!  But we did let them back in to open presents.  We used an old play tent, tree stumps from Caleb's room and the cloth camp fire my mom and I made for his room to make a little gift station.

 Caleb decided to sit inside the tent to open his gifts and he had a blast.  Quinn much preferred the masses of tissue paper left behind after the boys cleared out.

After presents the boys got their party favors and made their trail mix.  This time we supervised the scooping so the sugar wasn't so excessive. ;)

the token girls filling their trail mix containers.  We let them go first before unleashing sugared up boys on it!

We ended up running out of time and decided no more sugar was necessary for the day so we waited till the next day to have the campfire cake.  Caleb declared the party his "best birthday ever" and decided he will have a s'Mores bar every year!  I'm not so sure about that one but will agree it was a pretty awesome day!

Happy New Year!

 Wow, it's been a long time since I last posted any updates here.  Sorry about that.  Right about the time of my last update, little Quinn decided to stop napping - cold turkey S.T.O.P. napping and really stop sleeping in any fashion for quite a while.  No naps mean no time to upload photos much less post them here so the absence was a necessary one.  Naps are maybe sorta kinda finally coming around (night is another issue but I know one day I'll miss the chance to rock him once or twice - or 6 times!!! - or so they tell me!) so I'm going to try to start updating things here.  It's been a busy few months, for sure.  Hopefully I'll manage to get things updated over the next few days but no guarantees.  I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season!!

Since every post needs a photo, here's a really cool picture Caleb took of the snowflakes/frost on his window one bitter cold morning in December.

8 months and Happy Thanksgiving!!

Time is flying!

Quinny celebrated his 8 month birthday on Thanksgiving.  He is such a doll and his personality is really starting to show though now.  When he smiles he smiles with his whole face.  He has the cutest mischievous grin.   He is belly crawling all over the place and starting to get into everything.  This baby never stops moving, even when he's being held or nursed he is on the go!  Still no teeth in there but has been chewing a lot lately (then again, he's been chewing a lot since he was about 4 months old so who knows??).