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!

Old Hallowell Day and The Clam Festival

It's hard to keep up with reporting on all our Summer activities, but it's worth a blurb on our recent festival fun.

In our experience, nothing in Maine (yet) has actually been crowded.  There's just not enough people living in the state to amass what the rest of us call a crowd. The Clam Festival and parade are hosted in a neighboring town to ours called Yarmouth.  I'm guessing the population of Yarmouth is around 3,500. The Clam Festival boast crowds of over 100,000 (but that's over several days). The week prior to the parade and festival I watched the set-up occur as we drove through town.  First the tents went up for the food and craft vendors, the carnival arrived and began their own set-up, and most surprisingly, lawn chairs also began to dot the sides of the road of the parade route. The chairs began to show up on Sunday; The festival kicked off Thursday, but the parade wasn't until Friday.  I was definitely impressed with the early chair set-up, but also intimidated. Would there really be that many people that you needed to reserve a spot?

Fast forward to Friday. We kicked off the weekend festivities at 6PM with the 45th Annual Clam Festival parade. Patrick came home from work early and actually had to drive 10 miles out of his way just to get home since all the streets were already blocked off for the parade.  We gathered the kids and raced off to the parade, not knowing how difficult it would be to park and to find a spot to sit; afterall, by that morning, chairs lined the ENTIRE route of the parade on both sides of the street.

In step with our experience in Maine, despite the crowds (and this may have been the first real crowd we've seen in Maine) we were able to find parking just a  couple blocks away.  We came prepared to move fast with a stroller ride for all three kids. We pulled up and wiggled our way into a nice spot on a driveway just as the hour long parade kicked off.  We saw our share of beauty queens (or princesses according to Lexi), firetrucks, mini go-cart themed cars, and some pretty bad floats. The kids loved it all and Heath was particularly excited.

Looking for what's next in the parade.  You can see the crowds across the street here.

Heath enjoying the view from above.

Post parade, the crowds dissipated easily. No traffic jams. We left promising the kids we'd be back later in the weekend to attend the rest of the festival, including the carnival rides.  In and out unscathed--the way life should be - that's Maine for you.

The next day we headed North early in the morning to Hallowell to visit with Jen, Jess and Sam and attend Old Hallowell Day. We'd been invited to ride in the trolley in their parade and Finn and Lexi were very excited about the opportunity.  Not only would they be able to ride in a parade and wave to everyone, but in this parade, all the parade participants get to throw candy, adding to the anticipation.  As the adult riding along, I have to say that throwing candy is pretty awesome and it made the ride and waving to complete strangers pretty fun actually.

Trolley ride - Jen and Sam

Candy was enjoyed inside the trolley too!

Waving to Jess from the trolley (yes, it's me.  I'm actually appearing in a picture!)

Heath and Dad watching from the sidelines

Post trolley ride watching the parade.

Sam and Jess

It was hot, hot so we all left the parade and headed back to Jen and Jess' house for some relief.  The slip-and-slide and pool were pulled out and the kids had a blast.  It turned into what I may call Finn's best day ever.  You can tell by the look on his face how much fun he was having.  Keep in mind that Finny is usually too cold to do any water activity no matter how hot it may be.

I apologize that there are so many photos, but I wanted to try to capture just how much fun Finn had!

Sunday we all met up again to attend the Clam Festival and carnival. The "big" kids all had a chance to go on some rides.  Finn, again, was in heaven for the chance to "drive" a "real" car.

We had a fabulous fun filled weekend with family and great friends.

Numero Tres

We've officially moved from baby status to toddler status with Heath. Yes, he FINALLY decided to take his first steps this past weekend (mother's day weekend I should add). It was fitting as the whole family was there watching and it was like it happened in slow motion. Everyone saw it and everyone was equally excited - Heath included. Weighing in somewhere around 30lbs, we were really wanting him to walk months ago. It's not a completely done deal yet though. He's not walking everywhere all of the sudden, but he is gracing us with 9-10 steps on his own daily. Fingers crossed that this crosses over into true walking sooner than later.

Heath's been playing with Finn more and more, which is also really cute. Finn is finally recognizing that it might be easier to just share his cars and trucks with Heath rather than fight over them. Heath wants nothing more than to be a part of the mix really. I tried to grab a couple of shots of the two of them playing over the past couple days.

You'll also note we're adding another lefty to our clan. Lex and I are both lefties and now it looks like Heath is too. He loves to color. Note he is using "magic" markers. They only work on "special" paper. We tried real markers and the end result was not good for mom. It was a special moment today to sit and watch them all silently color together.

These last couple of shots are of Heath and Finn in the bathtub together. They were both belly laughing over Finn's silly antics. The lighting was horrible for photos, but I just couldn't resist taking a few photos to capture the moment and, of course, their naked car playing post bath.