Birthday Time

Photos: July 26, 2009

Brace yourselves, this is going to be a long post...there's a lot to tell about birthday number five. Starting with the fact that we actually had a "friends" party this year instead of just a family party. If you click on the invitation above, you will see that I had (what I thought was) a very clever idea to take the focus off of gifts and onto fun and celebrating the day. Once again I was wrong in thinking I was clever as only two families participated. {Way to go Dotys and G&G for taking photos. Thanks!!} We will be getting the photos back soon and can't wait to see what they are like.

Tony did a great job BBQing hamburgers and hotdogs on his birthday present. He did a great job despite wanting to just keel over from heat exhaustion. It was a pretty hot day, to say the least.

Hotdogs and juice boxes seemed to keep all the kids happy.

Jonas really wanted to take pictures so I let him take one with my camera.....

...and it turned out pretty good. Malachi is always ready with a stunning smile.

There were plenty of presents to be had. I didn't get too many good photos of the actual presents, but this one was from Grandma Bonnie and Grandpa Frank. It was a helmet and knee pads to go with the kick scooter they got him. Boy is he going to have fun on that!

This one is from Grandma Rose and Grandpa Jim.

Ooooh, aaawwwe, it's a personalized pillow made by Grandma Rose. Suh-weeeet!!!

AND a quilt made by Grandma Rose, too!!! Jonas also got the book that this quilt fabric is inspired by "The Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle. I'm sure most of you are familiar with it. It's an awesome book that Jonas loves and he was soooooo excited about his quilt and pillow.

Next up is something special in this cool camo bag from Auntie and Big Uncle.....Percy from Thomas and Friends, and a promise that Annie and Clarabel (passenger cars) are on their way soon!!!

That fantastic gift earned Big Uncle a running-jump-power-thank-you-hug from Jonas. He gave Auntie a big hug too, I just did get it on film.

There were many other fabulous gifts that I missed getting photos of such as: A Giant-Box-of-Every-Craft-Imaginable from Michelle, Travis, McKenzie and Jace; awesome squirt guns and frisbee/ball from Uncle Pat and Aunt Connie; and a sweet car from the Troutman family. Thanks to everyone from Jonas for your fun gifts. He really does love them all and has been giving equal playtime to everything.


Classic Big Uncle antics.
And finally, ice cream cones!!!! Oh, wait....how are these ice cream cones not melting in the 90+ degree heat? Wha??? Because they are really frosting and cupcakes that just look like ice cream. Wow, tricky. The kids thought they were fabulous. Especially when they got to the surprise in the bottom: candy!!! What a delightful sugar-bomb. {Parents: you are welcome.} The downside to the faux ice cream cones is that you can only get a single candle to stick in there. That was probably for the best since we could hardly keep that one candle lit long enough to sing Happy Birthday.
You can see Jonas inspecting his cone to see if he is down to the "surprise" part yet.
Pretty sure Jace has a man-crush on Jonas...or maybe he's just eyeballing that cone.Everyone loved the faux ice cream cones. It was totally worth all the extra effort.

For those of you who are oh-so impressed by the birthday dessert, here is a close-up of the cones while I was making them. I discovered this idea several months ago on a food blog and researched it for Jonas' party. There are lots of different ways to do it but I found one that seemed the easiest and looked to have the highest "tastiness" potential. After seeing this video, I made the big ice cream and then realized that it was waaaay too big and waaaaay too time consuming to make 20 cones. I improvised and made the little one with just two mini-cupcakes which, while not as realistically ice-cream-shaped, is much more do-able for a crowd. If you're interested in making some yourself, just Google "ice cream cone cupcakes" and you'll find tons of recipes.

Here's a one-page layout that I did in PSE to try out some of my free digital scrapbooking supplies. I love how it came out.