4 Years Ago....

....this little rascal was born.


He wanted a yellow cake with chocolate frosting and dinosaurs on top. These dinos came from our toy room.

He got a LOT of great stuff including clothes, Wall-e toys, a pillow pet, and The Incredibles. The best gift of all, however, was a big boy bike! He was so excited and so surprised. It was awesome.

A few days later, we had a friend party. It was our first time ever doing a friend party. We had a dinosaur theme and got some clever ideas online. We thought we were doing a pretty low-key party, but it turned out to be quite a bit of stuff and work. Maybe that's how they all are? We don't know; we're rookies. It was still fun, though.

Here's the table all ready for the guests.

Upon arrival, the kids got to color some dinosaur pages.

We had them do a couple of crafts. A baby dino in an egg.

And put together a dinosaur skeleton. These were to be the kids' goodie bags.

Don't they look cool?

We also played some games: Pin the horn on the triceratops. Notice the fine art work by yours truly.

Don't Wake Dino! consisted of the kids grabbing a dino egg filled with goodies before the sleeping daddy dino woke up and tagged them.

Instead of Duck, Duck, Goose we played Pterodactyl, Pterodactyl, T-Rex (I thought of that one all on my own!).

The best part of the whole party was all Danny. He created "fossils" out of salt dough he made, rolled out, and baked. While the dough was soft, we pressed some of our toy dinosaurs into it to make the impressions.

It almost never rains here and is typiclly warm this time of year, but on this day it was rainy and the temperature was in the 50's. Not to be defeated by the rain, we made the "excavation site" under the cover of our back patio as opposed to out in the backyard like we'd originally planned. Danny shoveled the dirt and then buried the fossils in it.

The kids thought it was super cool, and it was.

Their faces say it all.

The credit for the dessert also goes to Danny. He made volcanoes out of sugar cones drizzled with red frosting sitting atop crushed Oreos and chocolate pudding. Inside the pudding were dinosaur fruit snacks and dino eggs (jelly beans).

We sure love this little guy! He brings so much fun to our family. Tickling him is a great way to get him laughing and it's SO cute. He's usually very cooperative, obedient, and helpful. He is a good brother in this house full of girls. I took these the morning of his birthday. He was being a goofball, but I got some good ones out of it too.

Happy birthday, Dallinboy!