Life With These Four Sons: The Birthday Boys

I'm trying to catch up on some of the recent events and I figured that one post covering the three boys' birthdays would probably do.

Mason was the first birthday in June and like his older brothers' first birthdays, we decided the theme would be his stuffed animal, which is a dog (Jefferson had bears, Jackson has a monkey). Since I had purchased a special cake pan last year for Jackson's monkey cake, I figured I could make the pan more worth it by using it for Mason's puppy dog cake. The cake pan I used is Animal Crackers by Wilton. It can be used for various animal faces. Here is how it turned out:

My dad did most of the decorating, but the ears and color matching were all me. Maybe one year I'll try my hand at the actual decorating. I wouldn't mind taking a class.

Here's the birthday boy ready to have some cake:

At first, he didn't know what to think of having a giant piece of cake put in front of him. All he could do was say "oooo!"

But it didn't take long to figure out it was all his and dig in. He enjoyed every bite and made quite a mess in the process. Good thing we put a blanket down on the floor under him!

Yea! Now it's present time! Grandma got Mason a book about Dogs and we got him a t-shirt from our trip to the Coca-Cola store in Vegas, along with a few other things.

Toward the end of June, Jefferson and Jackson had a joint birthday party. Jackson is still young enough to not have enough of an opinion or understanding to protest, so we figure we'll do it that way as long as we can get away with it. The theme was CARS (and racing). Jefferson had originally chosen Hot Wheels as the theme, but I convinced him to change it to CARS when I found a CARS paper supplies kit at Costco for $15. The kit had tons of paper plates (in 2 sizes), bowls, napkins, cups, and placemats. I couldn't pass up the good deal. Just one package (of 8) of plates, cups and napkins would have cost the same.

Once again, I purchased a special cake pan for the cake. I was all set to just order the cake from the local bakery, but once I saw the pan and added up the cost of everything I needed, it cost about the same, if not a little less. The cake supply store had a CARS cake pan but Jefferson liked the NASCAR pan better, plus it made a slightly bigger cake. Jefferson was set on having a blue cake (his favorite color right now) and so we decorated (well, my dad decorated) the cake in Dinoco blue, just like in McQueen's vision.

The kids had fun making racecars out of candy, doing races around the orange cones that doubled as party favors, and hitting the pinata (sorry no picture).