Middle mini-man just turned 4 this past Saturday. We celebrated in the usual way…Brian cooked a bunch of great food and we threw a party in the back yard. This year’s theme was tie-dye and slip-n-slide. Thanks to our wonderful neighbors down the street, we also had an awesome big water slide. We all had a ton of fun, but the most wonderful thing was to watch Aiden. He had a BLAST…which made every ounce of preparation 100% worth it!

notable quotes:

* After I brought his cake(s) in, he took one look at them, jumped up and down and said “I can’t wait!!” Note: I originally ordered 1 cake, but it was only 1/4th of a sheet…what was I thinking? Luckily, my wonderful cake decorator must have been inspired because there was a second tie-dyed cake in the display case. I bought them both so we actually had choices: marble or chocolate.

* Ok…I just have to put this one down because it was the sweetest thing a mom can hear. After we all sang happy birthday, I whispered in Aiden’s ear “now before you blow out the candles, you have to make a wish". I can’t remember what he said exactly, but it was something like, “I wish on my birthday for my mom to give me a hug”. Seriously?!

* While opening gifts, Aiden was happy to let his friends help him out. At one point he announced, “wow – this is really big. I need help friends!”

I spent most of the party helping kids make tie-dyed shirts. Brian covered food, Auntie Denna (who was in town – yeah!) manned the other craft we had set up – stained glass paint blowing on gift bags. Nana (also in town – yeah!) pretty much helped with everything and took some amazing pictures. GG (yes…also in town – yeah!!!) was a God-send to the tie-dying operation. She helped get the kids in gloves, wash down the table in between groups (3 at a time) and folded paper towels to catch extra dye under each shirt. All three of my wonderful girls helped with party prep, clean up and general encouragement to a (slightly?) frazzled me.

A few friends hung out late and we ended the evening catching fire-flies and making s’mores. It was such an awesome day!!

I have so many pictures, I can’t post them all, but here are a few and a slide show:

Before we started party-prep in full force, we had a breakfast of chocolate chip pancakes and opened gifts. The pancakes were, of course, Aiden’s choice. Thanks to Nana, chocolate chips were quickly acquired and pancakes were made while Brian and I finished up some last minute yard-work. Here is Aiden literally TEARING open his gifts:

Logan, the ever-helpful brother (who is too hot to wear a shirt with his pjs), offered to help set up the new Kung Zu battle arena.

Brady, also very helpful, offered to help Aiden set up and test his most favorite gift: another gum ball machine (he picked one out last year too…the kid loves gum!)

Cousin Ryan had a blast with some of the tissue paper…

  Then he sat around looking cute and laughing :)

Here daddy preps the main course for the party: home-made and sliced (with his latest kitchen toy) Italian beefs.

Logan and Aiden helped fill up the 2 pools we had in the yard (or were they just squirting each other??)

I had planned to set up multiple slip n slides, but we borrowed the huge blow-up slide instead and it was GAME ON…the kids all had a blast on that thing! Totally made the party!

We set up 2 tables under our pop-up tent for the tie-dying and paint blowing. I used up 2 different tie-dye kits making example shirts (for practice and so that the kids could pick which design they wanted to make). It totally looked like a tie-dye shirt store at a county fair!

Every year I take a picture of Aiden with his party balloons. Here is one of them:

This is the cake that was sitting in the display case! I have another picture of the “real” cake, but it’s on the video camera. They looked different, but equally cool. Aiden and I voted on this one as our favorite.

Cake time!

This is a picture of the boys in the shirts they made at the party. Sadly, tie-dying does not lend itself to instant gratification as the shirts need to be bagged and left overnight before being rinsed and washed. I have seen several of the creations the other kids made from the party (more pictures and visits from other party guests, in shirts of course, are greatly encouraged! I would LOVE to have seen how they all turned outl!)

Happy birthday to my sweet, sweet little man. You bring such joy, creativity, love (and more than a dash of mischievousness) to our lives!!

Here are those pics plus more in a slide-show: