Aly's Special Day

Our middle-man turned 4!

So of course that meant it was time to party!

Corey's work allows him free access to their awesome printer and he made those signs for us to hang around. Good thing, because I didn't do any other decorations!
Aly was so excited for his party. He talked about it for weeks before hand, and a couple of days before he started saying that on Friday night (party on saturday) he would be "So Asited I can't even sleep!" (so excited he wouldn't be able to sleep!)

This next collage is probably out of order... these are a few of the happy party-goers:

Mary and Spencer, the Birthday Boy, baby Theodore, Alice, Kenzi, Jack, Henry, Gram and Grampa.

But before the party began we had to do the prep. This year I decided to let Alaster do the main decorating. He helped create the sand for his beach and Corey laid it down on the ocean. I made the waves, and boom: the birthday boy had a blank canvas to work with.

Gram made a trip to Amish Land to get some pretty awesome gummies and sprinkles for the cake. Have you ever seen a gummy penguin before? They are called "peachy penguins," and taste like peach ring candies. Penguins are Alaster's absolute favorite! He was of course happy that there were sharks, fishies, and octopuses too.

He was gracious, and let Jack help decorate. At the beginning Aly was just laying them down, but towards the end he started to make up stories and play with them on the way to the cake... the two penguins on the bottom left of the collage are a mommy penguin and her boy. He was having the fish do cool tricks to jump into the water, and just playing the way that is so typical of Alaster. He has such a great imagination!

I thought the finished product was rather cute. I especially love the one spot of sprinkles that he dropped down. It actually made quite a perfect little school of fish :)

After creating the cake we set up for the activities. We laid out the supplies and made examples of the final product to show the kiddos:

Since we were ending the party at the pool I thought we should equip everyone with sunglasses. (Thank you Walmart! 8 packs of sunglasses for $2.00!)

And then when I found those little shell boats I thought the kids could take them to play with at the pool. They did try... but they sank. Darn it! I should have tried it out before hand! Oh-well. They still had fun with them, and most of the kids were still excited to take their creations home.

After crafts came cake and ice cream:

His face could not have been cuter as we sang to him.
I think he felt very special, and I am so, so glad!

I thought the crafts would take longer than they did, and I had promised the parents I would only have their darlings in the pool for about 45 minutes. (we were still in the middle of that crazy heat wave, and the party was at the hottest time of the day)

So to kill some time we played musical chairs:

And duck, duck, goose:

(which... was super entertaining)

Then nothing was left but to head to the pool:

Oh... we did open a few presents at the party (not all kids brought them... we said on the invites that they weren't necessary).
The COOLEST present at the party was a homemade cape with the letter "A," on it, and a homemade mask to go with it. Thank you Freestones!

After the party was over and all of the guests had left Aly opened presents from Gram and Grampa and Mom and Dad. One of which (the Captain America mask) is pictured here.
He was just darling at his party.
Did you know we love our Alaster Morgan? We can't imagine our life or our family without him!
Happy Birthday little man!
We hope your special day was all you hoped for and more!