Eliza's 3rd Birthday

We had a birthday party scheduled for Eliza's actual birthday, but she got a high fever that lasted two days a few days before the planned celebration, so we had to postpone the party. We still tried to make her actual birthday a special day. The weather was pretty nice, so we spent the afternoon outside.

Having lunch outside after a long winter was a special treat.

We got out sidewalk chalk and decorated the back patio.

We (well, Eliza and Caleb) played with big sticks.

We (again, 2/3 of us) finger painted the house with mud. For some reason the kids get quite a kick out of this.

I made a little cake (actually a brownie... much better than cake in my opinion) for Eliza and we sang to her. She was really excited to eat some.

A funny side note memory is that Caleb would not eat his dinner,so we stuck to our guns and would not let him have any cake for dessert no matter how much he cried and screamed about it (which was a lot, by the way). Mike gives the kids a bath right after dinner, so I just supposed he had both kids. He thought Caleb was with me, but I was off doing something else. Where did we find Caleb? On the kitchen table, stuffing his face with Eliza's birthday brownie, as happy as can be. We couldn't help but laugh (but we definitely should have taken a picture).

We had 16 kids over for Eliza's birthday party, which was about as many as we could handle. Since our house can't accommodate that many kids with their parents, we decided to have a kids only party. Thankfully my friend Shelly stayed to help with crowd control. It was great to have an extra set of hands and eyes.

We kept the party pretty simple with a few games (pin the petal on the flower and bean bag toss), flower pot decorating (with markers, nothing fancy), and dancing. We had homemade pizza, cupcakes, and ice cream sandwiches. Instead of presents, we asked friends to bring canned/boxed food donations for the local food pantry. We talked to Eliza about what the food was for and how it was exciting to help the families who don't have enough to eat. She enjoyed collecting the food from her guests to put in a big box that we delivered to the food bank.

Mike and I have been working hard on a special gift for Eliza. You'll have to wait until tomorrow to see what it was!