Nathan is 4!

Oh my goodness you guys. I have a 4 year old! We’ve had lots of birthday fun going on this week that I’m really excited to tell you about.

His birthday was earlier, and we did a few things to celebrate on his actual birthday. I had to run a few errands, but he got to pick out a couple of new cars to bring home. We got Chick Fil A and took it to John’s office to meet him there for birthday lunch. The boys always love to visit Daddy at work, so that was really fun. We had Nathan’s favorite meal for dinner (pasta with tomato cream sauce, aka “Nathan’s Favorite Pasta”) and brownies for dessert. After that was PRESENTS.

Spencer getting in the way… ;)
I think this has been his favorite thing so far. I was hesitant to get Legos, but he loves them and so far Spencer hasn’t tried to eat any…so…I guess we’re okay for now.
I think all of John’s dreams for fatherhood were starting to come true right here…at least until Nathan got bored with the building part and just wanted to play with the finished product, so I sped along the building process because Spencer was waving bags of Legos in my face saying “open NOW!”.
 
So they had a good time playing with his new presents. :)

Today we had a large-ish little party for Nathan and his preschool friends. I kept telling myself that I needed to keep it simple, but then I kept thinking of things I wanted to do and it got bigger and bigger (at least with the food – I just can’t help myself)

My biggest self-imposed task with the birthday cake. I had so much fun doing the Tiffany’s bridal shower cake that I was itching to make something else.

So I decided to go all out and make a pirate ship cake. SO FUN, right?!
If I had actually taken the time to plan this out better (I basically found a picture on pinterest and was like “oh yeah, I got this”) I would have done a few things differently, but overall I’m really happy with the way it turned out since I was totally ‘sailing’ by the seat of my pants here. I was realizing that even though I decorated a sculpted cake at pastry school, I have never actually made one with real cake (most of that one was styrofoam). So again, I was just kind of putting it together as I went along. ;)
And Nathan LOVED it, and that’s all that matters :)

Nathan doesn’t really do group party games, so I didn’t plan any games, but I had the kids make pirate hats and hooks and they all seemed to really enjoy that. Say “ARRRRGH!”

And they mostly just played – we had plans to go to the park for the first half of the party, but it RAINED ALL DAY TODAY. Lame. But I think they all still had fun playing here.

I had a fun table spread for lunch. This would be where the rest of the self imposed complexity happened. I love setting up themed food tables ;)

Chicken salad sandwiches for the moms and “sea serpent” (chicken) nuggets for the kids :)
I realize this is a misnomer, as it’s supposed to be citrus that prevents scurvy, right? Just work with me here…
I just HAD to make cookies too, you know ;)
I’m pretty sure the treasure map numbers were my favorites – I LOVED the way they turned out!
Spencer was SUCH a stinker and kept swiping cookies from the table. But he’d only take one bite of each one before moving on to another. After the 5th cookie I finally moved the whole platter back into the kitchen. He was kind of mad about that…

After lunch we had cake!! I put the candles into the sides to look like cannons :) We sang (and at the end of the song, Nathan got a surprise kiss on the cheek from his little preschool crush! eeek! All of us moms were DYING) and had cake and there was general chaos until it was time to send everyone home.

I’d say it was a success! Now to clean up alllll the kitchen mess I’ve made in the last week ;)

Happy birthday Nathan! We love you and are so glad you are a part of our family!