Easter Recap

 Andrew woke up to his Easter basket filled with goodies.  He proudly took one thing out at a time and showed it to us and played a little bit before moving onto the next item.

 fruit snacks!

 wearing his tool belt and trying to open a egg

 After getting ready for church, we hunted eggs in our backyard.  We learned from the day before and the eggs were stuffed with stickers, goldfish, and small animal pictures; he ate goldfish the entire time.

We headed to La Palma for church with Grandpa and Grandma at Faith Fellowship.  Andrew was very excited to see Grandpa before the service.

 

 

 Traditional photos after church

Andrew's flashbacks available: 2011 and 2012

After church, we headed to Grandma's house for more Easter celebrations, lunch/dinner, and more spoiling of Andrew.

 Easter basket for Andrew from Auntie

 Easter basket from Grandma

 Easter Egg hunt! 

Grandpa and Grandma stocked his eggs with fruit snacks, fruit leather, and gold fish!  Andrew also helped find mommy, daddy, and Auntie's eggs! 

 Great Grandma Dee came for dinner and our egg hunt!

 Blowing bubbles with Aunt Melissa!

 Early birthday presents from Grandma!

Play clothes that Andrew put all on at the same time

(see that puffiness?  Yeah, that is 7 shirts and 4 pairs of pants).

 

Andrew's Birthday Party--The Decor

All Aboard the Choo Choo Birthday express! 

 

Although I planned to have a "small" birthday party, my low-key intentions combined with Pinterest and turned into a pretty crafty birthday party!  It seems like a lot of work, but in comparison to the first birthday party, this one was a lot easier and felt SO much less stressful.

 

Dave cut out the train below with foam insulation board and my ASB kids helped me paint it and the simple banner came from Alin's Party.

With one order from Oriental Trading Company, we had twelve conductor hats, bandanas, and train whistles.  My mom used her crafty talent to add each of the kids names to their hat bills and whistles.

For the party itself, Dave hung a clothes line of the fence and Melissa arranged the kid's hats, whistles, and bandanas so that when they walked into the party, they could stop to get "dressed" for the choo choo!

For each kid's goodie bags, I used brown lunch sacks (filled with small snacks, a bouncing ball, and choo choo sticker) and tied them with raffia and a cute train engine cut-out (an ASB mom volunteered to cut anything out of her Cricket for me, so all of these were done for me!).  The train suckers came from Oriental Trading Co too.

I made coloring pages by stealing a coloring page online and adding words in Publisher.  I also completely forgot to take these outside, so they were never used (opps).

We rented two tables and twenty chairs from the same people as the jumper for $20 (such an easy thing vs. collecting them from all of our friends like we did last year).  I covered them with a $1 table cloth and train track made from poster board and sharpie.  The train boxes were originally for the goodie bags, but they were tiny so they made great centerpieces (filled with tootie rolls to add weight).

I made the cake with help from my mother-in-law and sister.  It was relatively simple; the rectangle cupcakes pan and liners came from Alin's, I used two cake-mixes and it made 18 train cars.  Kit-kats are the rails, candy and pretzels are the toppings, the engine was seriously the only hard part and we'll just pretend that it's cute.  This was the brain child of two different Pinterest ideas.

The snack table "produce train" was a fail, but the colors are still pretty fantastic!

Other than this, the jumper added color, along with two pop-ups for shade!

Andrew's Choo Choo Birthday Party

Step 1: Get Dressed for the Choo Choo

 

Step 2: "Ride" the Choo Choo

Step 3: Jump

 

Step 4: Talk, eat, and hang out with friends and family

Step 5: Blow out candles and eat CAKE!

 Step 6: Open Presents!

 

Such a fun party!