noah 2.0

My Noah Bug is two years old!

Our neighborhood cake-maker-extraordinaire, Mariah, made him a Hungry Caterpillar cake, complete with "dirt" and "worms"...so cute!

We had a small birthday celebration with our neighbors and my mom. (I am realizing that I'm not a very good birthday party planner...)

Can't believe he's two.  Time for another.

Just kidding :)

eli is three!

Despite my best efforts, Eli's birthday caught me unprepared once again this year...I think it always will mostly because it's three days after Christmas. I had plans to have a big Thomas birthday party for him, but it just did not happen.

Fortunately our lovely friend neighbor/babysitter/aspiring-cake-maker, Mariah, offered to make him a Thomas cake, which I happily agreed to...she saved the day!

It turned out really cute and Eli was VERY excited about it.

We had a few good friends over, as well as Mr. Gardner's mom and stepdad, who had been here for the holidays. Elijah very much enjoyed being the center of attention, which is rare indeed for the 2nd of three little boys.

Happy third birthday Eli Superhero...mommy loves you!

pirate party

Every kid needs a pirate party, right? Josiah turned 5 this last week and so we re-used our pirate get-up from halloween and had ourselves a pirate party! I found these great free pirate printables from the lovely cottage industrialist blog and used them for the party.

She had these adorable cupcake wrappers and decorations...

Pirate hats and eye patches for the kids to cut out and put together...this one was a bit big :)

And a darling pirate bunting for the wall.

No pirate party would be complete without a treasure hunt! I wrote out clues on a scroll image I found on the web and hid them in various places around the house. The last clue led them to...

Party favor bags!

Most of the loot for the party bags I found at the local dollar store, some of it discounted because it was left over from halloween (who knew the dollar store had sales?)

I made some little maps for the party favor bags out of vellum I had left over from my days of attempting to scrapbook...

And filled in the decorating with some shells (from the dollar store), gold chocolate coins and some pineapple "boats"

He's still talking about it...Happy 5th Birthday Josiah!

one.

April 28 was my baby's first birthday.

I made him cupcakes from Pioneer Woman's sheet cake recipe, with this frosting, and they were really yummy.

He was quite happy with his cupcake and candle...mostly the candle.

Then we blew it out...and I think we broke his little heart.

We encouraged him to try the cupcake, but he wasn't too sure...I think he was still upset about the candle.

Then he realized, "Hey, this is good!"

At which point he quickly devoured one...then two cupcakes!

Here he is declaring his passionate love for cupcakes with a little song...

Just kidding.

I used to think it was cliche to always be commenting on how fast children grow...until I had them. There's nothing like having babies to make you realize just how fast a year goes by. It's really obvious with little ones...a year brings amazing changes.

Mama loves you, Noah Bug.