Sean’s birthday!

Sean just turned FIVE yesterday.  I can hardly believe it!  I asked him what kind of party he wanted to have and he chose a Thomas party.  He wanted one cake, balloons, more balloons and more balloons.  He also literally had 35 people on his list of people he wanted to invite including his teachers.  My favorite person on his list was “the guy with the blue shirt.”  I had to reign him in though and made him choose only a few close friends and his favorite friends from preschool.  Then I set out to make his party as Thomasy as I was willing to go.

I used my snazzy Cricut and made Thomas invitations.  I thought they were pretty clever:

Also, I made a Thomas cake.  I found “Thomas at Sea” from “Misty Island Rescue” on amazon.com for about $6.  So I based his cake on that:

I even made my own buttercream frosting instead of buying store bought frosting.  It was delicious.

My only other Thomas decoration was the tablecloth.  Imagine my surprise when I drove up to the park and realized they haven’t put out the tables for the spring yet.

I had brought packing tape to tape the tablecloth to the table so it wouldn’t blow away.  Instead I used it to tape it to the concrete. lol I had brought the presents over in a box, so I used that box, covered with a blanket, to put the cake on.  It worked out.

Here is Seany blowing out his candles:

I used my checkerboard cake pan for the cake.  I thought it turned out pretty well.

Enjoying some cake:

Sean opened his present from aunt Lorie first.  As you can see, he was SO excited:

“It’s just what I wanted!”

Bubbles from cousin Michael.

Grandma MacGregor gave Seany a G.I. Joe jet.  That thing has pretty much been in flight since I took it out of the box.  I dare say he liked it.

Seany has also been begging for a pillow pet.  However, I’m not willing to pay $19.95 for a pillow, no matter how cute or fun.  I found some knockoff brands on amazon for 8.  That I can do.  So of course I went with green, Sean’s very favorite color.  I was actually giddy when I clicked “complete my order.”  He loves it.  And my other kids are jealous.  Watch Emily’s face in this video. lol  (btw, aunt Lorie, I know what she wants for her birthday… lol)

One tradition my family always did was we got to pick whatever we wanted for dinner on our birthday.  Sean chose chicken nuggets, so that’s what we did.

Happy Birthday my 5 year old Seanbear.  I love you!!!

Chore Chart

Emily: “Hang up coat and backpack?  Why is that on there? lol”

Mom: “Um, because you never do it.”

Yesterday, about 20 minutes before the girls got home from school, I came up with a spur of the moment brilliant plan.  Make a “chore chart” for all of the things I have to remind/fight with them to do everyday.  Rocket science?  No.  But I had never done it.  I taped it up in an obvious place with a sheet of sparkly stickers right below it.  My girls were defenseless against the sparkles.

They came home, saw the chart, read the directions and excitedly went to work.  “This is going to be so fun!”  Emily even kept writing in more jobs for herself just to be able to put up a sticker.  It’s the first time I haven’t had to fight with her to get her stuff done.  The girls even helped the boys do their “chores.”

Today as they walked out the door for school, they both excitedly asked/begged me to have another chore chart up when they got home.

Who knew?!  Not holding my breath, but hopefully this will last…