I was pretty slack organising anything for Josh's birthday this year, but at the last minute I decided I would invite our friends over on his actual birthday to help us celebrate. So I sent out evites and everyone replied saying that they could come - OK I had expected a few not to come since it was so last minute - now there were 15 kids and 8 adults coming to our house. I was only going to provide afternoon tea, mainly made up of cake so now I had to some up with cake for all these peole. I decided that this called for my version of the train cake - you now the one - the one from the Womens Weekly birthday cake book - yeah that's the one. I figured one train carriage for each kid would be the way to go so the day before his birthday I set out to make the 4 gluten free, dairy free, nut free cakes that I was going to need. All was going well, the cakes were baked, crumb coated and the marshmallow fondant icing was made when I checked my facebook - 4 of my friends (7 kids) had cancelled at the last minute..oh great all this for what! Oh well It was just about done now - may as well finish it all off. Another half hour of so wrapping presents and I was ready for bed (it was 12:30am after all).
Of course Josh's birthday began with an early morning. When Andy got up at 6am he was already up and about so we roused Lexie and did round one of present opening. His excavator (construction vehicle #1).
An excited little boy saw daddy off to work then played nicely while mummy tried to get her house looking respectable. Grandma and Grandpa skyped in a bit later for round two of presents (construction vehicles #2 and #3). It was good to see Josh actually talk to them over skype for a change rather than running screaming from the room. And he continued the trend by actually talking to Margo and David too when they called.
The rest of the morning was spent bugging mummy about when do we get to decorate the cake, whilst mummy attepted to clean, till I finally gave in and got them going.
So this was the before:
And 6 packets of lollies later.
Our friends came over about 1:30pm and we all had fun playing in the backyard before retiring indoors for the cake ritual (no way was I going to try and move that thing).
The kids sat nicely at the table eating away (mainly the lollies of course with a bit of a nibble at the icing), then 10 minutes later.....
A classic case of sugar high, every one of them running in circles...Lexie told me later that that was her favourite part of the whole day.
Once all our friends had departed it was time for present opening number 3. Trains and train tracks this time, along with a new Leappad (so hopefully we can stop the fighting over Lexies one).
And then Present opening number 4 with Aunty Mel, Nick, Ernie and Eddie. (construction vehicle #4 - anyone seeing a theme going here).
Overall there was one very happy little boy. He had a great day. Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes and gifts, he loves them all.
Since Friday had been such a long day we had decided against doing our normal birthday dinner out figuring that a meltdown was more than likely to occur if we did try it, so we went out Saturday night instead. Where did Josh want to go.... Bugaboo Creek where else. So we had a nice dinner and stopped into TC Scoops for icecream on the way home.
Whilst I'm posting I'll finish off with a few additional photos of the kids. During Andy's meeting in New York he'd been given a bunch of chefs hats for the kids so upon returning home we had to try them out, that means BBQ.
I will say that thanks to this Josh has now learnt that you need to wear a shirt to BBQ. grease splatters on a bare belly are not fun!
We also took a train trip into town a couple of weeks ago. No real reason Josh just wanted to go on a train. So we trained into South station, walking over to the Boston common. Had a splash in the Frog Pond.
Rode the Frog Pond Carousel and fed the duck in the Public gardens while watching the swan boats glide past.
