Joey's 3rd Birthday

Boy am I ever behind in my blogging.  Joey's birthday has come and gone and now he's a BIG boy at the ripe ol' age of 3.  We had a couple of different celebrations this year.  The first one was a superhero playdate with my Cradles to Crayons mom's group.  There were about a dozen mom's there and twice that many kids.  It was a lot of fun.  Crystal made the Spiderman cake for me and Joey and Elsa went dressed up as Spiderman and Spidergirl respectively.  They looked so cute.  We had several Spidermans as it turned out plus a firefighter in the mix.  He got all kinds of great presents and they all had a lot of fun just playing at the park.  I think the highlight of this celebration though had to be the pinata.  Let me tell you those kids are dangerous when you put a big stick in their hands.  The great part was that everyone got a turn (3 hits each) and the pinata wasn't broken open until we were on our second go around with the kids.  It was so much fun I'm not sure who enjoyed it more, me or the kids.

His second birthday celebration was the weekend after his actual birthday and it was with all our family and our five closest friends and their kids.  We went with a pirate theme since that has been Joey's big passion this past year and all of the kids, and some of the adults, came dressed for the occasion.  We had it at the pavillion park on the North side of Rancho Murieta which turned out to be a good thing since of course it had to rain on the one day that I planned an outside function.  The pavillion was large enough to accomodate all our guests, the tables, chairs, food and games for the kids.  Though I must say the rain did not detour the kids at all from playing at the park as they didn't care if they got wet or not.

Larry did the majority of the cooking, smoking and then barbecuing ribs, plus we had all kinds of sides, soda, beer and juice.  I ended up going with cupcakes this time around simply because it was easier to do.

Joey loved this party and wanted to have another one the following weekend.  He didn't quite "get" that you only get one birthday a year.  And he had so much fun with his friends and cousins and loved being the center of attention... and getting all the presents.  Larry and I got him a skateboard that he'd been asking for for the last six months, along with some other small treasures.  He loved everything he got though and of course wanted to play with it all as soon as we got back home.

It's funny because each year I say I'm going to do something smaller, more intimate the next year and instead we keep going bigger and bigger with our celebrations.  I'm just so enthralled with my little man that I want to give him the world and to make sure that all of his childhood memories are something to be remembered.  So again, when we wrapped up this party I was saying again that next year was going to be smaller in scale and yet I find myself already teeming with new ideas for next year.  I just can't seem to help myself.

So for all of you who celebrated with us, and/or sent him birthday wishes, we thank you for making it his best birthday yet.