I just want to PARTY!

Welcome to Everest's construction zone! My plan was to make him a shirt with a 4 on it for today, but I found very cute construction material and I couldn't resist making pants too. These pants were made with a lot of love, considering I made them 3 times. (I got the instructions from Amanda Blake Soule's book- The Creative Family and Handmade Home. I highly recommend both books and her website Soulemama.com.) I was trying to hurry, so what should have taken me 1/2 an hour, took me over 4 hours! But I am very happy I persisted and made the pants too.

My friend Courtney came over Friday night and helped me decorate. Thank you for all your help, the construction zone looked great!

Leaf wearing his party crown. Ready to do some building!

One of the activities was painting. The kids painted a picture, then they got a photo mat with a dump truck cut out (you can see Jill holding one). They put the picture in a frame, the photo mat on top and tada...a dumptruck picture!
We put rice in a container with lots of small toys for the kids to find. They had a blast digging through the rice and finding all kinds of treasures. We also made homemade playdough for the kids to construct, create and build.
We could not have asked for a better day in December. The sun was shining! Hooray! It was cold, but not cold enough to keep 5 kids off the trampoline! They had a great time jumping and knocking each other over.
Happy Birthday Everest! Funny story about the candles...I got these cool candles that burn whatever color the candle is. When it was time for the dirt (we put brownies in a dump truck), I was in a hurry and put the candles in upside down (one end looks like a wick, the other is rounded and you have to unscrew a cap-my finger was over the word unscrew, so I missed that part). I lite the "wick" and we began to sing....the candles burned out before we were halfway though the song. Luckily I had put in the balloon candles from Leaf's birthday as decorations. I lite those while we sang and all was fine. After the party, Nathan went to put the candles away and discovered I had put them in upside down. He has had a lot of fun teasing me about this.
Last but not least, we broke the pinata. We were worried that each kid would not get a turn before the pinata broke. Instead each kid had 5, 6 or more turns. We finally just let them hit it without a mask.
Leaf and Lisa (our neighbor) watching all the excitement.
The pinata never broke, but it did fall off the string. As soon as it hit the floor the boys tore into it. There were all kinds of goodies in there, horns, lizards, pencils, bracelets, etc, but no there was not any candy. =)All the kids had a wonderful time. We enjoyed watching them play and build together.