Tanner's 3rd Birthday

So we had a blast throwing Tanner a fire truck themed party for his third birthday. I really like to plan parties and events so I started preparing for the party three weeks out. I was just as excited as Tanner for this party...Ok may be a little more so, because I had set up a tour at our local fire station and a party at the park afterwards. I lost a little of that excitement as the day for his party got closer and we had to move the party back to our house because of rain. I also decided to make a somewhat ambitious cake that would would take some time to make, which I was planning to spread out over a couple nights. But that didn't happen, so Ray and I stayed up till 2am the night before that party decorating and making the cake.

I got the idea and design for the cake from coolest-birthday-cakes.com. I started with an 11' by 15' cake that I cut down the middle and then cut two inches off the one end.

 I stacked the two big halves on top of each other and then placed the two inches pieces side by side to make the cab of the truck.

 While I worked on the cake, Ray blew up fifty balloons, just for fun!

 I had to do two layers of red frosting, a crumb coat, and then a cleaner one on top. I made two batches of red colored butter cream , two white and one white that I made black, gray and yellow out of.

 I had some major hands cramps when I finally decided tp put it in the fridge and put the rest of the details on in the morning.

 Here's our "Pin the Tail on The Dalmation" poster that we used for one of our games.

 Ray put up lots of streamers, he kept himself busy so he could stay up with me. Sweet guy.

We started the tour in the lobby where they had the kids watch a funny fire safety video. Then the firemen had them play some "Stop, Drop and Roll".

 As the firemen started showing us his gear he casually added that if we had any questions to just raise our hands. Well Tanner did, several times, lol just to ask "he and his friends have the fire man stuff now". Well that's what I understood, the fireman barely caught a word.

 Tanner and some of his friends who wanted to be in the picture.

That was one heavy coat.

 Kayla almost kneeing Tanner in his fire hose ;)

 Surprisingly not many firemen fit in the cab, even the little ones.

 The whole gang in front of the big fire truck.

 At the end of the tour they all got hats and badge stickers. Tanner was one happy guy!

 Then it started pouring down rain, so we all rushed back to our house.

 It was hot dogs, chips, cheese, carrots and apples for lunch.

After taking ten minutes to arrange the kiddie in a circle lol we had a couple rounds of hot potato before we lost their attention.

 Tanner's first reaction to the cake was to touch it.

 His little face says it all! It was a complete surprise!

 He got a fire truck, some cars, puzzles and other toys. I he didn't know what to play with first.

The best present was his first real Lightening McQueen Bike complete with a shark helmet that he picked out himself. We took him out for a bike ride the later that day and he got the hang of it right away. It was a really fun day and we're so happy Tanner is a part of our Family!

Labor Day

 I've been wanting to take an updated family picture for a little while but we just haven't had the time. So we went on Labor Day to the NC University Gardens. It was around noon and we hadn't eaten lunch yet, Raegan was ready for a nap, and it was really muggy outside. We tried taking the pictures ourselves since Ray has a nice camera with a tripod, but the whole back running to get in the picture thing didn't really work. So it wasn't the funniest family outing, nor did we get really great pictures but it's okay. We'll probably try again at Christmas time.

Where's August Gone?

Did anyone else feel like this month just flew by? Not that I'm complaining, I'm very ready to say goodbye to the heat and say hello to my favorite season of all...the Fall. It has the best weather, activities, holidays, food, clothes and my favorite memories from Pennsylvania.
Tanner's birthday is also in the Fall, we want to get him a real bike, that way he can stop just scooting himself along on his tricycle and learn how to pedal. I think once he gets the hang of it we want be able to get him off of it. He's very excited about his birthday and talks about wanting a fire truck party, a party at the park or riding on roller-coasters. I'm not sure where he got the roller-coasters from...

Hey Family and Friends

I thought I would start a blog to let you all keep in touch with our family. I will try to keep up with postings and pictures and I hope you will all share your thoughts with us. We love you and hope you enjoy it!