Nathan's Train Cake... and party!

So Nathan has been REALLY into trains and dinosaurs recently so I decided to make him a train cake for his birthday. I got online and looked for some ideas on how to put it together and I must say I am QUITE pleased with the way it turned out! I decided to use pound cake mix because I've noticed in the past that the regular cake mix cakes tend to crumble and me a little harder to work with. Anyway, Emily helped me put all of the wheels on as well as the smoke stack in the front and she put all of the animals in the second car and helped make their cage too. She was so excited to be able to help while Nathan was napping and the big kids were at school. She was so pleased as everyone came and admired it and she was able to truthfully say that she helped with a lot of it! Sweet girl! So here is the finished product:

So we had our babysitting co-op here at our house tonight so we figured we'd celebrate while the kids were all here to help us eat the cake and for more fun and excitement. One family didn't come tonight so there were 4 less kids than usual and we ended up with 2 cars of the trains totally untouched! We decided NOT to get out the ice cream that we bought since we gave them cake and soda and WE were the ones putting them to bed, we didn't want TOO much sugar in them and they were perfectly content with what they had! Anyway! Here's the whole crew waiting to sing to the birthday boy!

And here's our sweet little Nathan blowing out his candle and enjoying his cake!

We are getting a big trampoline for the backyard soon but we decided to go ahead and get Nathan a little mini tramp for inside since there is SNOW all over the grass in the backyard right now. Plus he LOVES loves LOVES jumping! Every time he gets on a trampoline he's talking about it for WEEKS! And his face just lights up as he jumps! Plus this one came with an exercise DVD and resistance handles (what do you call those things?) and a jump/calorie tracker. So I figured I'd use it sometimes too, to shake up the Tae Bo and Turbo Jam videos and plain old treadmill. Anyway! Here's Nathan THRILLED with his new Trampoline and also playing with a train that we got him (he also got a few books).

The kids all come to babysitting co-op in their jammies (hence the nickname "Pajama Party") so that's why everyone is jammied up at Nathan's B-day celebration!

Oh, and I had to post a picture from the fun way this exciting day started! Tyler came running up to my room this morning yelling, "MOM! There is a HUGE incident downstairs!" My first thought was 'Where did he learn the word incident' followed closely with "OH NO!" I heard Maddie sobbing and crying harder than I think I've ever heard her cry. She was so upset that I was worried that I'd find her covered in blood! Well, instead of blood it was MILK and the tears were tears of concern that she'd get in trouble and she was so upset that she'd made such a big mess! Sweet girl! Well I guess she had finished off the last of the milk in the carton so she got a brand new one out of the fridge but it was heavier than she thought and she dropped it onto the floor! The circle indent in the side of the carton busted open and the entire gallon of milk was spilled all over the kitchen and she was sobbing holding a sponge right in the middle of it! Sweet girl. I told her it was okay and that I wasn't mad at her, that I knew it was an accident and then ran off to get the camera! She was so sweet and cleaned up the whole thing with me. Emily asked if she could help at one point and Maddie said, "It's not your responsibility Emily, I made the mess so I'm responsible to clean it up, and Mommy is just helping me because she loves me. You don't have to Emily, it's ok. It's my job." Isn't she sweet? Anyway, here's the picture!

Oh yeah, just one more thing! I DID cut Nathan's hair yesterday and he's just the cutest thing ever, but the little stinker REFUSED to take pictures! I tried to let him play with his trains and just sneak a few in there, but he wouldn't cooperate! Finally we just went down to the basement and played and these are a few cute pictures that I got from that. We'll try again outside when it warms up a bit.

This last one is the ONLY one where his head is up and he's smiling, actually I'm pretty sure he was just talking but it LOOKS kind of like a smile! Little stinker! Oh well! Sweet happy boy! We love you so much Nathan! It's so funny because I was looking back at all of his baby pictures when I was making that scrapbook page of his first year and I noticed that in EVERY picture he was SO SO SO super smiley and happy and he has ALWAYS been like that! He really did start smiling at 2 weeks and even now he's always so happy, but for some reason the last several months as I've tried to take pictures of him, he's pretty stoic! Oh well! He's the sweetest little boy and we just adore him every day! He adds SO much joy to our family and we are ALWAYS laughing at the things he says or does. We love you so much little Froggy!