Kaden's 4th Birthday - Pirate Party!

I seriously can not believe my tiny, 4 lb 14 oz preemie is now a huge 4 year old. They grow up way too fast!

As I've mentioned before, Kaden decided he wanted to have a Pirate party this year. I was all for it! My mom likes to say that I brainwashed him into thinking that's what he wanted, but I asked him several times and every time he said he wanted a Pirate party. I have been planning and working on stuff for this party since January. And I am very proud of how everything turned out. So, without further ado, here is Kaden's Pirate Party!

Kaden requested a sunken pirate ship cake. Chris and I decided that this was something we could do on our own. I think it turned out great and it was delicious!

We used two 13x9 cakes, cut them into a few different size pieces and went to town. We used pretzels, graham crackers, Rolo's and melting chocolate to decorate it. Kaden even helped pipe some of the sea life. He was so excited to help!

Now, onto the decorations. We had a treasure chest filled with jewels, coins, beads and everything a pirate could want. We also had pirate hats for the kids and they all got to take home their own bags of loot.

Chris and I made ship masts for the centerpieces and I purchased and cut out the awesome banner. The loot bags were just regular ol' brown paper lunch bags that I stamped with a skull and cross bone foam stamp that Chris made, and we finished them off with some jute rope and the thank you tags that I made.

Here is the stamp Chris made. All he needed was a stencil (which he had to draw himself), some foam board and a glue gun.

Chris' mom made an awesome watermelon shark!

And we had cute little juice barrels (Little Hugs) for the kids. Kaden loved them!

Chris also made pirate swords out of balloons, those were a lot of fun!

And of course the bouncer was a big hit!

The adults enjoyed it too!

Everything turned out great and Kaden had an awesome Birthday! Thank you to everyone who came to celebrate with us!

Quick stop at the beach and another custom shirt

We went out to Domenico's in Belmont Shore for Chris' birthday. YUM!!
We love their Pizza and house dressing! Kaden also tried their tomato soup, I think he liked it!

Mmmmmm, pizza!

After lunch we headed down to the beach. Kaden thought the Kite Surfers were really cool!

And here is the other shirt we made. Kaden helped with this one. We ironed the skull stencil on and sprayed the shirt with white spray fabric paint, let it dry and pealed off the stencil. I think this is my favorite so far!

Trike-a-thon and pony rides

Kaden had a trike-a-thon at school last week. Chris and I took the morning off of work and both grandmas came to cheer him on too. We made him a special shirt using freezer paper and some fabric paint and he was ready to ride! He rode over 60 laps in 20 min.

They also had Pony rides that morning.

I love his school!!

Making a Birthday card for Daddy

I'm a couple weeks late on this, but I had to share. Chris has a huge sweet tooth and I obviously wanted to sabotage his weight loss. So Kaden and I made him a candy birthday card.

It says:
Happy Birthday to our Sugar Daddy
Now that you are 30 do your bones Crunch when you Rollo-ver and have your Whoppers turned to Milk Duds, if so we promise not to Snicker.
We were going to give you 100 Grand, but at your age we thought it would slip through your Butterfinger or that you would Blow it on a trip to the Milky Way to see an Eclipse.
We want to wish you Mounds of Almond Joy on your Whatchamacallit. We hope you enjoy this card and hope it doesn't make you Chunky.
We love you to Pieces!
Love your, Peanut Butter Cups

Chris thought it was a cool idea, he thought it was pretty funny too. And of course he enjoyed the candy!

Fish

So....Kaden has been talking about how he wants a pet fish, a gold fish to be specific. And they just happened to have a booth at Railroad Days where you could win your very own gold fish. So of course we let Kaden play. And of course he won himself a fish. YAY!! Now what the hell do we do with this thing? He didn't even come in a bowl, just a Ziploc bag.  Kaden named him George.

We managed to keep him alive in his little bag the rest of the time we were there and stopped at Petco on our way home to get him some sort of tank and some fish food. He seemed to like his new little home, but we thought he needed a friend. So the next day when we went back to Railroad Days we let Kaden play the game again to try to win him a "friend". And he did, he named this one Jake.

He told us that George was going to be so happy to have a friend. He also told us that they needed a toy. So we stopped at Petco again on our way home. We decided they needed a toy, a plant, and some rocks. After all of that, they needed a new tank with a pump and hell lets just throw in another fish too. Kaden named this one Nemo. So $60+ later, we have a nice fish tank and 3 fish. Thanks a lot $1 fish game!

And by that evening they had all died. Yep, sleeping with the fishes. Poor George, he had made it a whole day and was just fine until we brought all this new crap home.
So Chris ran out, had our water tested and brought home 3 new *almost* identical fish and Kaden never knew they were gone. We have had these 3 fish for a week and they are still kicking. YAY!!

Trains, trains and more trains

We took Kaden to Railroad Days at the Fullerton Train Station last weekend. He had a blast! They had everything a railfan is looking for. I think his favorite thing was to watch the model trains, he could have watched them all day. But there was more to be seen, much more! There were face painting booths, coloring stations, booths filled with train toys and actual trains to walk through and sit in. There were railfans of all ages and I'm pretty sure they were all loving it! Oh and did I mention it was free? Oh yeah, they totally had me at free! Kaden had so much fun Saturday that we deiced to take him back for a little while on Sunday. He was very excited to go back. Here are some of our pictures.

Winning with a sick kid!

Kaden has been sick with Croup this week, fun stuff!! We have been trying to steam him in the bathroom before bed to help with this. We are also using the humidifier in his bedroom.
He doesn't really want to stay in the bathroom when we are trying to steam him though. This week we decided to let him paint on the bathtub with his water color paint. OMG, best idea ever!! He loves it! So we get the bathroom all nice and steamy and then start his bath. We are knocking out three things with one stone! He's getting clean mostly clean, he's being creative and getting his arts and crafts on and he is breathing in the nice humid air to help with his croup. WIN!!!