Signs of Spring

Warm weather, sunshine, playing outside, and daffodils all say spring to me. We got to enjoy all of these things today and it was wonderful! I really hope it's here to stay!

Tyler's Birthday Festivities

Since over a month has past since Tyler's birthday and party at the Bounce House, I decided it was time to report. Honestly, I have just been so drained lately. But there's no surprise there. I'm just glad the first trimester will be over in a week! After going through this twice already I realize how fast pregnancy really does go by, so in no way am I trying to rush it along. I am really blessed with great pregnancies, but I am just ready to have some of my energy back!

Tyler's actual birthday fell on a Monday this year, so we did the traditional birthday dinner with family that night and then planned his party with friends for the first Saturday in February. One of Tyler's favorite foods is meatloaf, so that's what we had for dinner on his birthday. He wanted to have cupcakes to celebrate, so he got to help make and decorate them. He decided on a color of sprinkles for each person's cupcake and then wrote their initial with icing. Notice that his is the ONLY green one!

We decided to avoid all the chaos and clean-up of a party at our house this year, so we opted for a party at The Bounce House. Tyler was very entusiastic about the idea and he had a blast! Here he is having a great time with his friends.

And one of Daddy and Allison taking a breather.

After an hour of playtime, we headed to the party room for pizza, cake, and presents! They really do take all the hassle out of it for you. I was able to pretty much just sit back, enjoy myself, and do some video taping. (Luckily, Auntie Vanessa was very willing to take pictures with her spiffy, new, high-tech camera so that I wasn't doing double camera duty!)

Time to sing "Happy Birthday" and blow out the candle!

Tyler was more than lucky when it came to presents. He really racked up this year! Here is just a sampling of what he got.

We attempted a picture of the whole group. Here's take 1:

And take 5:

It's tricky to get 10 kids to smile and look in the same direction all at once!

Another Cake

My nephew, Kayden, turned 2 in February. To celebrate his birthday, he had a Cars themed party and this is the cake I made for him. My sister wanted the cake to be low in sugar, so it is made with a natural sweetener called Agave nectar. The frosting was also to be low sugar, so it was made from cream cheese and Agave nectar. This made it a little more difficult to work with since it got soft rather quickly, but all-in-all, I think it turned out pretty cute!