The Set-Up

  I've been out of town and life was a little chaotic trying to get ready to leave for a week, so the blogging took a back seat to all of that.  Here I am trying to get caught-up . . . here goes!

Tate turned three on February 17th.  I'm excited to get Tate's birthday party pictures up because we had a great time!  The festivities started with a birthday hair cut the day before.  This time we let dad do it.  Tate is counting how many more seconds he has to stand still.  Dad's hair cuts are great because they are free and usually are done very quickly because Tate really doesn't have the patience to stand still longer then about two seconds. 

I asked Tate probably a few months ago what kind of a birthday party he wanted and he decided on  "Diggers/Construction."  There is always some kind of construction going on near our house either building more houses or working on the roads, so we love spying the all the diggers when we go out.  Tate has loved diggers for a long time so I thought it would be a very appropriate birthday theme!   

 Tate was my little helper getting everything ready for his party.  It was a bit of a learning experience for me.  I like things to be done "just so" and looking "just right," but how could I tell Tate he couldn't help me paint or make the cake for his own birthday.  So, he helped and things weren't perfect, but I kept reminding myself my audience was only three year old's and as long as Tate was happy-it was going to be great.  I got everything setup the night before so I could take pictures because I knew as soon as Tate woke up he would rearrange everything (which of course he did!). 

 These are the take home boxes that his friends went home with.  They had fun things like stickers, a toy digger, a party blower, and play dough stuff in them.  I really wanted each of the boys to get a dump truck balloon too, but of course the store was out of those when I went in to get them.  As you know, Tate is a big fan of balloons and he wanted to make sure his buddies got their own balloon, even if it was just a star.

 "Brown Bag Construction Lunches."

 The digger cake.  This cake was a lot of fun to make.  Tate absolutely loved getting to help (note the not perfect piping lines-I had to take lots of deep breaths while making this one:))  I found the idea on Family Fun's website.  The cake was pound cake which was awesome that I didn't have to bake the cake.  Tires-mini chocolate covered donuts.  Dozer parts-Twinkies.  Twizzlers, M&M's, and Gumdrops were also used.  Crushed graham crackers and Oreo's for the dirt. John mentioned it being such a small cake which it was.  It was the perfect amount to feed 6 little boys and a few mom's!

 The activities:  Bean bag toss.  I covered a couple diaper boxes with a roll of brown paper and traced on the dump truck and bulldozer.  Tate helped color them with a pen while I went back over it in paint.  The bean bags were supposed to look like piles of dirt.  I couldn't find the exact material I had in mind.  So, this lighter-suede material made for some nice and soft dirt piles.

John like to refer to this next activity as the "playing with garbage" game.  Um, I worked long and hard collecting all these boxes and cans that the kids could use to build towers and then knock them over.  I thought I was being resourceful! 

 We also set-up a construction obstacle course in the garage which you'll see pictures of in the next post.  That was the plan for the party.  These things never go exactly how I have planned so I was remaining open and flexible to things going completely a different way the next day!