Finn's Birthday Part II

After a birthday morning skype with Grammy and Pappy and the opening of all the family birthday presents, we all headed to see "Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Musical" to celebrate Finn's actual birthday. Mo Willems, the Author of the Knuffle Bunny books, has quickly become a favorite in our house, so we jumped at the chance to check out the musical rendition of one of our household favorite stories. The kids were thrilled, watching wide-eyed as the well-known characters came alive on stage.

Post show we headed to a local restaurant called Silly's to continue the celebration. Silly's is truly a silly and eclectic place.  A restaurant that somehow draw the hipsters, while also embracing families.  I'm not sure how they pull it off, but it was the perfect place for an out-of-the-ordinary meal out for us to celebrate Finn's bday.

Upon arriving back at home, the neighborhood kids were out in full force (as the temps were in the high 40s/low 50s).  Our kids eagerly joined them to play in the mud and enjoy the lazy Sunday. 

When I tucked Finn in that night he asked if dad could make him a Jessi cake (from Toy Story) for his next birthday. 

Happy Birthday sweet Finn!

Finn's Birthday Weekend

I am learning just how unique each of our children are.  When I asked Lexi who she wanted to invite to her last birthday party she listed four people.  Thinking this was a good approach, I made the mistake of doing the same for Finn when we began thinking about his fourth birthday party.  It went something like this...

"Finn, who would you like to invite to your birthday party?" I asked.
"Um, well the kids at my school."
"You mean all the boys?" I asked.
"Nope.  I mean everyone.  I want everyone to be there." He said with a big grin.

I haven't mentioned yet that he has 17 kids in his class.  Gulp. Not wanting to change the game on him, I decided we would adapt this year, but I can tell you what approach I will NOT take with him around this time next year.  After some discussion we settled on a dino theme for the party.  We don't generally go overboard on the theme in our house--it's more of a means of helping us decide what the invitations will look like and, most importantly, what kind of cake Patrick will create. Since I have been traveling non-stop for the past 3-4 weeks I enlisted Trish to help with the invite creation.  As an aside, have I mentioned her craftiness yet?  She does great work in case you want to hire her to create your next invites or baby announcements. No doubt, she produced some incredible invites.

The actual party was the day before his birthday.  We kicked off the party with a dino art project.

 
A display of my kids' completed dino projects
 

Art was followed by some singing and dancing fun with a local musician, Matt Loosigan.  If you haven't heard him, and you have kids under the age of 6, I highly encourage you to purchase some of his music.  He's a fantastic performer and truly has a gift in interacting with kids.  The kids had an absolute blast with him.

Homemade pizza and cake followed to tie up a  fantastic birthday party! No worries, I've included some photos of the dino cake, prepped by dad as usual. That's a rock next to the dino in case you are wondering.

Finn went to bed that night with a grin on his face, knowing that his actual birthday wasn't until the next day, and thrilled he'd have a whole additional day to celebrate again.

All update you in the next post on the fun activities from his actual birthday!