Last Friday afternoon, we had Aiden's 2nd birthday party in our back yard.

Theme: Get Messy
Mission: Um.....get messy!!!
Supplies: Spray bottles filled with a watercolor paint, a "craft" table, water tables, a kiddie pool and make-your-own banana splits.


I'm pretty sure everyone had a blast. It was even amusing for most of the parents. Because really....how many days as a mom or dad do you have the chance to say "go ahead and get paint & food all over yourself. There are no rules today...just don't hurt yourself or anyone else".....awesome! The invitations had a monkey on them since Aiden is a crazy climbing monkey of a child. I must call him a goofball quite often because, when Logan saw the invitations, he immediately starting calling Aiden's party the "Monkey Goofball party" and he asked everyday if it was time for the party to start. :)


Here is Aiden on his actual birthday. We are "testing" the banana splits for the party which was the next day. We used three monkey bowls that I bought to hold snacks at the party. Too bad I'm too health conscience to actually fill them ALL the way to the top with banana splits (maybe when the boys are older!!)

Yep...it all LOOKS good....let's see how it tastes! Monkey bowl!!
Here Logan poses as annoying mommy snaps a picture and thinks "can't we get to the eating part yet?"
Typical monkey Aiden....he always stands when he eats.
After dinner, we opened the gifts that Nana and Papa sent. Aiden has no shirt on because it was covered in ice cream (are you surprised?? of course not!!) Here, Logan helps Aiden open his new Winnie the Pooh phone as Aiden tears into package number 2.
Aiden helps Bray play with the new phone.
Poor Aiden, Brady ended up taking over the phone and Logan eventually ran off with the Diego camera :)
It's good to have brothers who are willing to help open your gifts and play with them for you. That night, after the boys went to bed, mommy started getting ready for the party. Here are the bottles of water colors that I bought. I mixed these in spray bottles about 1/2 and 1/2 with water for the kids to spray on sheets, each other and anywhere else in our yard. These are lined up in color order. I got 4 bottles of green....because of you-know-who (green-obsessed Logan of course!)
Spray bottles ready to go!! I had to laugh at the pink ones...wow do they look like pepto bismal or what?!
Here we are in the middle of the party. Logan, MacKenzie and Maddie are standing in the kiddie pool that I kept refilling throughout the party so the kids could spray in it all over again and make it this lovely murky green/brown color.
Here are the art tables (which my neighbor Susan...in the background of this picture, set up for me during naps on the day of the party - go Susan!)Kristina loaned me all of this awesome art stuff (and the spray bottles for the water colors). The kids had a blast painting the table, on coffee filters which were supposed to be turned into flowers, and on themselves. Aiden plays at the art table!!
Shockingly, Aiden wanted to play with the balloons more than the spray bottles which made me think of.... ....this picture which we took LAST YEAR at Aiden's first birthday party! Here he is....loving the balloons. They are just different colors, but they are in the exact same place on the patio (tied to the lights) and someone had to hold him up to play with them (my friend Karen).
Back to 2008....here is the art table transformed into the make-your-own-banana-split station (which actually turned out to be the "have-your-mommy-make-you-a-banana-split" station)

Nothing like pure sugar to make all the kids stop spraying themselves and the swing set (notice Logan drinking the "ice cream soup")
Aiden and AJ are like 2 peas in a pod. Here, they decided to stand up on top of one of the water tables. Right after I took this picture, AJ started waving and yelling "thank you everybody!" like he was performing on a stage.
So....let's rewind to 2007 and Aiden's FIRST birthday party one more time. Here is big brother Logan doing some crazy head-dunking in the ice bucket that formerly contained the juice "boxes" (capri suns) We blamed this behavior on the 2 cupcakes that Grandpa let him have. Now back to 2008 and who is dunking their head this year???? It's Aiden! I guess maybe the cupcakes weren't to blame...maybe it's a gene that only emerges when a Houck boy turns 2!

Ella wins most messy by a landslide!!!! I kept saying that she looked like a purple smurf. Way to commit to the party El!!!
This is the sweetest card Aiden got. It was drawn by his friend MacKenzie. It's Aiden and MacKenzie under a happy sun. She kept asking me if Aiden could open his gifts before she had to go home because she really wanted to show it to him - what a sweetie!
The day after his party, we took the boys to Learning Express for A to pick out his birthday gift from us. This was his "big gift", a marble run set that can be set up several different ways. For some reason, our boys LOVE marbles! We only let them play with this supervised for now because I worry about the marbles on the floor with Brady starting to move around!! (the set came with 50 marbles, but each of the older boys only get to play with 3 at a time. the others are kept in a bag, in the box, way up high on a shelf in the play room). I think these pictures were taken after a trip to the pool....sorry about more topless children :)
This really is a very cool toy!! Daddy and mommy like playing with it too! It's super nice and very cool...I see expansion packs in our immediate future :)