Number 4 Party

Well, the birthday party finally arrived!! Aiden has been asking about it for about the past two weeks, which makes it all the more fun for all of us adults. He even asked multiple times during the day if it was still "my party", all the way until bed time. Thank goodness Easter was the next day and gave him something to look forward too after all of the partying was done.

So, here is our little four year old train engineer.

And in case you haven't figured it out, Thomas the Train was our big theme this year. It seemed only natural with all of the trains running through my living room. :)

The actual surprise tactics had to be revised a bit this year. In the past we have put our little man down for a nap and magically when he woke up there would be streamers, cake and presents galore. This year we had to take our birthday boy on little excursions. So Grandpa Terry and Dad took him to the church parking lot and raced his remote control car. Unfortunately that lasted all of may-be 20 minutes before the batteries died. So they went for a drive to see the "castle" in Anamosa. (aka the big stone prison...which does look a bit like a castle).

Meanwhile, I was decorating the Thomas cake and Grandma Mary was mixing up a batch of Wes' favorite potato salad. The boys came back, I jumped in the driver seat and hauled the two little guys down to Kalona to pick up Grandma Barb. Choreographed perfectly, and the surprise was well appreciated!! :) Our boy loved his party!

He got lots of wonderful presents, including many trains as well as "Cranky the Crank" to move cargo on and off the train!

It was a flurry of paper everywhere, but one of the fun things to watch was the moment that he truly paused to look through a new book that he got. Another humorous moment was when he was excitedly opening the two biggest boxes on the table, to find that they were full of clothes. His response, "Clothes...ugh, I hate this." What more can you expect from a boy, right? :)

Jude even got in on the present action...a new ball!

The next morning was Easter, and the boys were up early to discover that the Easter bunny had left them each an Easter basket.

Since the boys were both showing signs of old fashioned colds we didn't make it to Easter service. We spent the morning playing with all of the new trains, eating cookies and chocolate from the Easter baskets...

...and prepping for Easter dinner. We even pulled out the wedding china and made a pretty fancy table for our our gathering. Pretty good smiles on all of us here. I love Aiden's smile...even at a young age, he loves it when all of us can be together.

During nap, the Easter Bunny made another house visit and hid piles of eggs in our back yard. This was Jude's first year for Easter hunting, and at first he didn't quite want to give up his eggs to put them in the basket. In fact there was one find that he wouldn't let go of for a while. But once he figured out the task at hand, he put his game face on and loved every minute of it. He even surprised Wes and I with a few of the eggs he spotted!!

Aiden knew exactly what the task was as soon as he stepped foot out the door!! This was his game face! :)

He did great, pointing out all of the "ball" shaped eggs for Jude to pick up, spotting eggs on the squirrel feeder and even on top of the garage. But the best find was a whole nest of eggs under a mysteriously placed sandbox sieve in the middle of the yard...eyes popped when he scored that one!! And our little guys with baskets full...

Going through the eggs to check out the Easter stash.

And quite honestly, this post wouldn't be complete if I didn't mention all of the Wii gaming that the family did. Girls vs. Boys Carnival death matches...can't beat them. Wonderful birthday / Easter weekend!!