5th Birthday Party

Landon's birthday is on a Sunday this year so we decided to have a birthday party on Saturday.  Our close friends the Reeds have a little girl, Emily, whose birthday is on the 22nd so we decided to have their birthday parties together this year. The gifts were so thoughtful, and we would like to say thank you, but the best part of the day was getting to spend a special day with friends.

 

Here are Landon and Emily's cakes.  Emily wanted a "Princess and the Pauper" cake and her mom, Allison, came through.  

finished cake with candles

Landon loves the Birthday song and blowing out candles

Travis, Landon, and Beverly

This is the first year that I think he really enjoyed opening gifts with phrased like, "Oh Wow" and "Cool" and, "OOO".  It was so much fun to watch him.   

Landon playing the guitar he got from his mom and day

 

 

Landon playing the drums he got EARLY from his mom and dad.

 

The Making of the 5th Birthday Cake

The time has arrived to start working on Landon's Birthday Cake.  Wow!!  I can't believe that he is going to be 5 years old this year...Oh how the time flies by.  This year was another easy year to come up with a theme for his birthday:  Imagination Movers.  For those of you who don't know who they are, here is a quick link that tells you and little about who the movers are and what their show is like.  Landon LOVES to watch their show which includes singing, dancing, playing instruments, and NINA!!  Anyway, back to the birthday theme, The theme was easy but finding a cake idea to match was not as easy.  I finally found a cake I liked online, sorry to whoever make the cake: I can't find it again, that I thought was going to be easy to make and this is how it went:

I used a block to help me level each cake (That's what I have so that's what I use)

Travis made me a template so I could cut the cakes to look like gears

If I had been smart I would have stacked the two cakes together before cutting but I wasn't thinking that far in advance so I had to stack them and use the first cake as the template so that they would match up exactly.

Landon helped me make the icing

Icing the cake was the hardest part.  When I picked this cake I thought this would be no big deal.  Boy was I wrong.  This is the part that took the most time.  Trying to get the edges smooth was not fun.

This is the end product.  Warehouse mouse piped onto the top layer, and FYI, this was my first time ever piping ANYTHING!!  It was easier than I thought it was going to be.

I was overall pleased with the outcome.  There were a few things that bothered me such as you could see some of the "crumbs" through the icing but that comes from lack of experience and there was nothing I could do about it.  All that matter's:  Landon LOVED it!!  I could ask him, "What kind of cake do you have?" and he would say, "Movers."  I would ask him, "Who is on your cake?" and he would say, "Warehouse Mouse".  Isn't that what it's all about?

Car Camping

We finally did it.  We went, as Travis calls it, Car Camping.  Some friends of ours decided it would be great fun to have a multifamily camp out.  Now this was not your typical camp-out.

not a great picture but it's hard
to take a pic of a moving little boy at
wearing a head lamp!

There were about 15 families that came, it was in the back yard of Travis' Boss's family home (not where he lives but where he grew up) in the big town of Arvonia, VA.  This location meant that we had the benefit of having indoor plumbing, which is a big plus for me!  Because Travis is such a big Back Packer he never really considered it camping unless you had walked, a really long way, to your campsite.  Now that we have Landon I think that maybe he has changed his mind, a little bit, in certain circumstances. We started planning for this outing by making a trip to REI for suitable car camping items.  After much research, by Travis, we found the perfect items: tent, mattress pad, head lamp for Landon, and lantern.  Now we were ready!


The outing started with an inflatable bouncy.  Yea I know, that's a little odd for a campout but this outing was set up for families for little kids and it was great fun.  Landon jumped, ran, and flopped for hours.  I think Travis was more worn out by night fall than Landon was from jumping, running, and flopping with him!

Once it started getting dark it was time to watch a movie.  They had a huge blow up movie screen so we gathered around with camp chairs and blankets and watched 'Rio".  Watching a movie was a great idea because how do you keep up with  several young children in the dark?  The movie was a big hit and by the end Landon was barely awake and ready for bed.

Landon sleeping in the tent
 with "blankie" on his head.

Sleeping in the tent was a great adventue within its self.  Landon thought it was so fun to crawl into the tent with mom and dad and sleep, in the middle of course!

I wish that I had taken more pictures but we were having just to much fun to stop and grab the camera.