Party Birthday Party

No, the title is not a typo. There was a birthday party for four (4) three (3) year old children. Did I make it confusing enough? Hope so! Trinity, Alex, Zachary and Ava celebrated turning 3 together this year. I remember growing up with my friend Andy, who was born five days after me and we celebrated quite a few birthdays together. It was a fun time because a) there were many hands to make light the work, and b) we were going to be at each other's party anyway, so why not kill two birds with one stone? Only this time, there were four little birds. Party on!

Trinity and Teagan, warming up for the party! Trinity's smile has been coming along nicely.

Party hats were the order of the day. I think that if this party were to have a theme, it would be Pinterest.

Even Maddy got in on the hat action!

Autumn and a garden gnome. It appears that Teagan is working on his smile too, with slightly less success than Trinity. Fortunately the cute factor is not influenced by the quality of smile.

Dads didn't escape either...

Not sure how this works, but it appears that our children are transformed into gnomes with the easy addition of a conical hat. Strange.

I am not sure, but I think that this was right before Teagan started pushing Alex around. I think that this is what my grandfather referred to as "the toughening-up process".

Charlie's got the tongue. Sweet girl, that one.

As usual, we have the photo op. Hmm, how do you think this one is going to turn out? More on that later...

The audience for "pin the candle on the cupcake"

Apparently I am the most excited. Nice shot, eh? Why don't they ever get my good side?

First up was Alex. I am pretty sure he was the only one to get it right the first time.

Trinity finally pinned the candle, but not until making up her own game of "take off the blindfold repeatedly".

I think that Zach simply didn't know what to make of all the crazy adults. Where's my mommy?

Trinity shows us her cupcake-decorating prowess. I would show you a picture of her eating it, but I think her eating prowess is well documented on this blog.

Alex going for broke!

Maddy's first cupcake? I could be wrong, but the way she attacked the frosting  it made me think that she had done it before!

Zach is the only boy his age I know of that wanted water over juice. He seemed to like the sprinkles though!

More! This was probably after he had plowed through two cupcakes. That's m'boy!

Ava with sprinkle make-up. It's sort of like glitter, right?

While Trinity was opening her present, Teagan was running back and forth behind me. Every time he would come around my shoulder and say, "Boo!"

The pleasant mayhem of gift giving, receiving and unwrapping. That's my new favorite saying. Pleasant mayhem. I will likely use it again, since I have two young children. As they get older, I can imagine this phrase evolving (or devolving?) into just "mayhem". Should be a fun ride!

UPDATE: I finally was able to post this picture after some technical difficulties:

Thanks Alyssa for a great photo!