Noah's Birthday

Remember Noah's birthday a month ago? Well, I'm finally getting around to blogging again. The fun thing about Noah's birthday being so close to Halloween is that he usually wants his party to have the same theme as his costume. We had a Monsters Vs. Aliens theme so of course he wanted an Insectosaurus cake and costume. What? You've never heard of him? Yeah, well, we kind of go for obscure things in our family.

Anyway, I had grand plans of this amazing 3D cake in my head.


Awesome right? Right before I started screaming and throwing wads of cake all over the place, I decided to try and salvage it before moving onto plan B (screaming and throwing).



I used up almost all of the frosting on my 3D melting raccoon monster so I had to get creative. Fortunately, everyone leaves their decorating sprinkles at my various cookie decorating parties throughout the year (which normally bugs me!) so they definitely saved the day. I cut the monster vertically and plopped him on a pan and used a few extra bits to shaped insectosaurus.


Orange and black and red sprinkles were my life savers--you just can't make those colors yourself. At least, I can't. My construction paper limbs and McDonalds' kids meal Monsters vs Aliens toys (ebay find!) were also my good friends.

The party was a zoo. I don't think I'll invite that many kids over again. hahaha


Noah got a Lego table from all of his friends* and a couple years ago Mark's mom sent me all of his old Lego sets. So I built up all of the sets and had them ready for Noah to play with while Maren was sleeping. (Maren is the destroyer of all things Noah loves--at least according to him)


*Mark and I had this almost brilliant idea. I think it just needs to catch on and it will be totally brilliant. Our kids do not need anymore toys. In fact, we have organized and boxed up all of the toys (except cars and a couple random things for Maren) and put them down in the basement. If Noah wants to play trains, the room has to be cleaned up and we will go get that set. If he wants to play Legos, the trains have to be cleaned up and then we can switch sets. Noah will actually play with his toys now instead of dump everything out and then abandon them to jump on my head for the next hour. So our idea was to ask parents NOT to bring Noah a present to his party but instead contribute $2 (optional!) to a group gift (Lego Table). We know kids love opening presents so we let Noah open his presents from grandparents and we wrapped up the group present. This almost worked pretty well except some parents didn't really follow instructions and sent a gift anyway or like 10 times the amount of money (We were very gracious, I promise!). The kids who didn't bring a present for Noah were confused that other kids brought him a present. Anyway, it was mostly fine. We just need everyone to catch on and it will work perfectly. I hope it does too because I hate shopping for kids' birthday presents because it takes me 30 minutes at least to decide which crappy present is the best choice. If I had the means, perhaps I wouldn't hate it so much! Although I might since I think kids probably don't need anymore toys. I guess I'm a grinch like that.