Fourth Birthday Festivities!

Tate's fourth birthday was a blast.  His birthday fell on a Sunday this year and with the next day being President's Day we had three whole days with Glenn home from work and it was pure bliss.
Sunday morning when woke Tate up we made his favorite, pancakes, for breakfast.  Glenn made him a pancake in the shape of his big birthday present to see if he could guess it.

He didn't.  But we filled him in and went down stairs to check it out.
He loves the teepee in my mom's basement.  He wants it set up every time we visit and plays with it every day we're there.  So we decided we needed one to make our little unfinished basement a bit more fun.  I found some tutorials and went to work.  I also tried a tutorial for some cute little floor pillows to put inside which was necessary because it's so cold and hard down there.

He hopped down the stairs, ran inside the tent and said "Hmmm.  This is a good tent for me.  And bounced from pillow to pillow for a few minutes while Finn sat outside and laughed at him.   I'm glad he likes it and I hope he plays with it for a long time!

It was a fun morning.  We opened a few presents.  Played and played.  Then went to church just for sacrament meeting for the announcement that they were splitting our ward.  Turns out it doesn't affect our ward as much as the other two involved, but some big changes none-the-less.

After church we got on skype with Nana and Grampa so they could see him open their gift, Star Wars toys.  He was thrilled and spent the rest of the night imitating yoda, acting out battles, and my personal favorite, mixing his star wars toys with his new castle set.

Finn even got to play with the new goods which made him so happy.

We had breakfast for dinner (because that's what Tate wanted) and the Garvins came over to share birthday cake and ice cream with us.  Man, it is nice to have some family living near by!

It was a perfect birthday.  We spent tons of time playing with toys, reading books, snuggling, and telling our boys how much we loved them.  Bliss. 

On Monday Glenn suggested we head to the YMCA to go swimming.  We'd been told that the Y near us is cool but we hadn't checked it out yet.  I wasn't thrilled about the idea because it was cold out and sounded like a lot of work to get everyone dressed for swimming then cleaned up and dressed for playing again, but I'm really glad we made the effort because Tate had a blast.  They have an amazing in door pool with some water slides which he's not quite tall enough for, a lazy river, and a shallow pool filled with water features.  He was in heaven.  It took Finny a little longer to warm up to the idea, but he ended up splashing away and laughing so hard.

Both boys took great naps then we went to Tate's birthday party at Jumpoline.  It was a very cool place and he and his friends had a blast.  There were several rooms set up with different configurations of trampolines and they went from room to room bouncing and wearing themselves out while laughing themselves silly.  

Tate with Carson and Lincoln.

Tate on the ground with little Henry and Skye and Finn crawling in to join the fun.

This is Ryanne.  She's one of my favorite little girls at Tate's preschool and she has a thing for Finn.  Her mom tells me that at home she wants to pretend to be our family.  She tells her mom, "You be Tate's Mom, I'll be Tate, and Ben (her little brother) can be Finn."  She's so so cute.

Tate in the dodgeball room.

We didn't have to pay for the party place (that's another post entirely!), so we decided to spring for a cake and pizza too.

Time for Birthday cake!

Tate eating cake with Evie and Ryanne.

It made my heart smile to see him surrounded by such sweet friends.  We moved here a year ago and I was nervous to start over in the friend department, for me and for Tate.  And while we still miss our Houston friends so much, sitting at his party, watching him surrounded by kids who he has gravitated to made me feel so happy for him and so proud of him.  I'm grateful that thus far he's been drawn to such good friends.  These kids were sweet, friendly, and played well together.  I enjoyed being able to spend a bit of time talking to all their parents too.  The world is a scary place sometimes, and it was nice, for one evening, to be around so many good families who are trying to raise their kids to be good people whether they're of our faith or not.

Having Glenn go back to work on Tuesday was a total bummer after having such a long, fun weekend together, but all good things must come to an end.  I'm glad that we like to play together.  I know there will come a time when we and our kiddos are so busy that we won't have time to have entire weekends of play so we will make the most of it while we can!  Happy Birthday Tate-o!