Kyson's Fourth Birthday 5-23-09

Kyson’s birthday this year was such a blast! We really had to think HARD about his birthday this year since last year was so crazy! If anybody remembers that party, I didn’t blog then but I did send my updates with pictures then. I just might have to add a few pictures from that event….but anyway, we had this awesome party, I put in tonz of work, we turned the house into a Jungle and had way fun jungle animal games and a super creepy snake Cake. Well for a shy three year old it was way too much. All the kids families were invited so we had a LOT of people there and Ky ended up cranky nearly the whole time. He loved dinner (pizza) but then when we busted out the cake and he saw it he freaked out! He wouldn’t blow out the candles and he didn’t want to have anything to do with that cake, including eating it. Needless to say although everybody else had a blast, Kyson wasn’t a fan. So we have discovered that Kyson is not a big crowd kinda kid. He is shy, always has been but has opened up a lot lately to getting to know new people, well I should say kids, he still gets really shy around adults that talk to him.

So I put a lot of thought into how to make it fun, exciting, and still a party that Maliyah could help me plan since she is WAY into party planning just like her mommy!

These are the invites that we made for his friends:

I came up with idea of a cooking party since he loves to help me in the kitchen and figured we could do two friends, but not their families…that would just be too much of a crowd. He picked the two friends and we started the planning. It was perfect! He was so excited about the party to happen all morning (actually all week), Duck got him a special breakfast of donuts and chocolate milk and the kids helped us set up for the party. I think honestly he was mostly excited to cook!

I made each child (only four since we only invited two friends) an apron for while they are cooking, and then a matching canister to hold all their goodies in that they were going to keep from the day. They both turned out super cute and thanks go my VT for lending me her sewing machine!

They had various cooking stations, creating their own cakes and lunch. We had one game, cake, presents and were done. And it still went over. The most awesome part was that the planning was fairly easy as the activity was making their own lunches!

These first pictures are of the kids right before the party. I asked Duck to take a couple and he did such a good job. Like five in a row of all three kids smiling! (oh, and jsut to warn you before you get started...there are a LOT of pictures in this post!)

This next one DUck had the kids yelling Happy Birthday and Jayden really got into it!

This was their hand washing station

The Aprons

The grocery store for part of our game, which I'll quickly explain. We had our little toy car that they had to drive to the store, fill the grocery cart with some items, drive the cart to their home (the play kitchen on the other end of the deck) cook (filling a small cup with water and dirt) then put the groceries away, return the cart and drive back home. They loved it! I had videos which I'll post with the rest of this months videos next week.

This was where we started out making cup cakes. I had the liquid ingredient and dry ingredient pre-measured before hand so they just had to mix them together, put them into their star shaped "pans" and then we cooked them. Then later they returned to this table to make their special smoothies for lunch.

Next the kids made their own pigs in a blanket. They had dough they rolled out with their own mini rolling pins, then cut them into a shape they desired (with cookie cutters) then rolled their hot dog up and put it in the little oven!

Next they got to make their own fruit kabobs. They had more fun eating at this station than actually creating!

We moved to yet another table then got started on the smoothies. This was really fun to watch them not only trying to scoop out their pre-measured ingredients, but watching maliyah trying to scrape out every last bit of sherbet for her to eat!

The blender was a little loud for RYAN.

After we finished making the drinks (and drinking most of them!) we still had to wait for the Hot Dogs to finish cooking, so the kids played outside. This is my friend Kelda who came to help me with the party. She was awesome and helped keep things running smoothly! Thanks Kelda!

Lunch TIME!

Our last activity was decorating the little cakes that the kids got to make! They each got to choose their own color to mix in their frosting then decorate with a variety of candies and sprinkles. They got super creative and loaded them up!

These are the little cake boxes I put together for the kids to take their creations home in. I found the boxes for $ .25 at Fred Meyer then just decorated with scrapbook supplies!

I did make a regular cake to serve so they could take their little ones home. The funny story is, since they already created their own, I was going to keep this cake very simple, just for the purpose of eating (since every other time I make it the purpose isn't eating? ) Anyway, but after frosting it, I just couldn't leave it. I saw we had extra chocolate bars....but then there wasn't enough, so then I aded some mini chocolate chips. 45 miutes later and with a blue frosted set of tweezers, it was done and I was satisfied!

Here is a picture of all four kids with their aprons, then following are the pictures of their canisters. They are actually slim jim cans I have held onto forever and I just mod podged the matching fabric on them. They were the perfect size to hold all their goodies. We found some fun things at the dollar store, rubber spatula and scraper sets, mini cookie spatulas, cookie cutters, then got the mini rolling pins and then I made their aprons which were super cheap too since I had most of the fabric and for that size only takes about 1/2 a yard! It was really fun and suprisingly easy to put it all together.

Last of all we let Ky open his presents. Mostly I took video so I"ll post alittle of that next week as well. He loved everything he got and was super sweet to his friends to thank them and give them hugs. All in all it was really a fun day, a fun birthday and I was so happy that Kyson had such a good time!

Okay, so I know I have already said enough, and there are a million pictures, but I have to at least share my 4 favorite things about my Kyson
***He has the sweetest smile that just makes my heart melt.

***He knows Jesus loves him, and he does his best to be a good boy


***Kyson gives the biggest, tightest hugs and kisses!


***He has a big heart and loves his family