We had another birthday at our house this weekend.  My oldest, Gabriel, turned 3.  He is REALLY into cars and trucks.  As in, that is just about the only type of toy he plays with.  Seriously.  He might play with something else about 1 hour per week.  The rest of his play time is spent with his cars and trucks.  (Or looking at books.)  So I felt it was only appropriate to have a trucks birthday party theme!  They were actually construction trucks, and we had the cups, plates, and napkins to match.

Back in August I bought a couple of large Tonka sandbox toys at the Amazon clearance sale for $5 each.  I bought a big front loader and a big dump truck.  My Mom usually makes our birthday cakes, but since she didn’t have a truck-shaped cake pan, I decided to get creative.  Since we already had the front loader and the dump truck, I wondered if they could play an important role at the party.  Initially I thought of putting them outside in the sandbox for play during the party.  But after I found out I needed to come up with a different cake idea, I decided these two toys were going to play a more important role.  I put them on the table and served “Dirt Cake” out of them!!  Don’t even ask me what I made that dirt cake out of.  It goes against every healthy-eating instinct I have.  At least Gabriel didn’t eat hardly any of it.  (You know why, don’t you?  The Dr. Sears sweet foods theory is at work.)  Here’s a view of the table.

Anyway, it was a great birthday party.  I don’t go for those “all out” parties with 20 friends and a bounce house in the front yard.  They totally stress me out, and my rule of thumb for the guest list is, the number of friends invited = birthday boy’s age +1.  He was three this year, and I actually only invited 3 friends.  His little brother Nathaniel counted as the fourth guest.  Unfortunatly two of the guests couldn’t make it, so he actually only had 1 friend at the party.  Of course grandparents and other adult family and friends were here.  I think it all turned out pretty well.  We had another birthday party to attend that afternoon, so it was a busy day filled with too much sugar.  But hey, it was fun.

This weekend we had a house full of company over for our little guy, Nathaniel’s first birthday.  I don’t really get into those huge kind of birthday parties for kids with everyone you ever knew and a big meal.  I don’t like stress, and that kind of party preparation would totally stress me out.  So we had about 20 people, mainly adults, cake and ice cream, lemonade and water.  Simple and fun.

We have one of those really cool red plates.  You know, the ones that say “You are special today”, on them?  I bought it on eBay for our big guy, Gabriel’s first birthday.  I really like traditions, and this red plate is going to be one of our birthday traditions.  So, we always start out with the cupcake on the big red plate, sing, blow out the candles, and then we let the kiddo have the cupcake and keep the plate in a safe place.

When Gabriel turned one, he liked his cupcake, but he was not in love with it.  Grandma and Nanna ended up feeding it to him because he didn’t really want to do it.  Nathaniel?  Well, he really dug in.  He picked the cupcake up with one hand and licked it first.  Hmm, what’s this?  Then, once he got a real taste, you couldn’t take the thing away from him!  He looked super cute and had a smile on his face the entire time.  (Don’t tell him, but he was actually eating an apple muffin with butternut squash hidden in there.  The icing fooled him!)

He got lots of great presents and not too many.  I didn’t feel like we needed to get rid of all of our old toys to make room for the new stuff.  Just some great additions and some different things we didn’t already have. He got some money, which we will happily add to his savings account, and some great new books and clothes too.

Toward the end he seemed to be getting tired and was ready for all the hoopla to be over.   He got really clingy and only wanted me.  But all in all, he had a great time and I know the family and friends enjoyed it!  Thanks for everything, y’all!

P.S. I would also like to send a special thanks to our awesome neighbors Cory and Joanna for videoing and taking pictures when we couldn’t!  Thanks for the memories!