Kent and Rebecca: the birthday

Whew.

What a weekend/week/month/summer.

This weekend looked like this:

Friday: Nicholas's birthday

Saturday: Alicia went through the temple, moving Josh and Alicia's belongings into their apartment, dinner out with the family, Dallin and Cindy and boys arrive

Sunday: awesome day with the Wilcox family, sprinkled with deliveries of reception decorations that needed to be stored at our house

Monday: wedding prep started bright and early, set up luncheon and reception, bachelor party, etc

Tuesday: The Day. Wedding, luncheon, reception, come home and crash in bed.

It's been happy and fun and great, and very very very busy.

So let's get started with the birthday, shall we?

I learned my lesson last year, and this year we made the birthday cake the day before the birthday.
Nicholas wanted to decorate the cake himself.
I guess if I was a really nice mom I would have let him, but I'm still working on the "nice mom" stuff,
so I sliced off the top of the cake, set it on a plate, and let him go to town.
I wish I'd taken a picture of the finished product.
Four ENTIRE bottles of sprinkles, plus half of about six more bottles.
He licked every frosting utensil I got out (after I was done using them). At one point he got frosting on his foot and he asked me if he could lick that too. Um, no.
He loved making his own little cake.
Ellie loved it too--when we weren't looking, she climbed up onto the kitchen counter and snagged two giant fistfuls of sprinkles off of his "cake" and shoved them into her mouth.

Nicholas went to bed super duper excited that night,
and first thing in the morning on Friday he came into our room. Giggling.
We went straight downstairs to open a couple of presents.

He got to open a nerf gun and poptarts. And he ate the entire box of poptarts that morning. All four foil packs. I think he was just so excited about the fact that I was saying "Yes" every time he asked me for another one.
You only turn four once, right?

The gift reactions were priceless this year.

My boy is just so cute.
Why is he four already? Can't I keep him little forever?

He also got to open his new bike (and helmet).

Oh, and the holding his pants up? He scraped his knees three weeks ago and still insists on holding his pant legs up to his crotch because he doesn't want them to touch his "ouchies." I wish I could do something to stop the awkwardness, but I can't. Believe me, I've tried.

Holding up the pants and making a silly face at the park.

We got lunch from Wendy's as a special treat and took it to the park to eat.
When we pulled into the parking lot, Nicholas said,
"Oh yes, this is the park with the stinkiest bathroom in the world!"
Luckily, we didn't need to use them this time.

It was beautiful there. We picked leaves off a low hanging branch and threw rocks into the dry riverbed. We saw a giant black and white butterfly. The kids were happy, it was warm and shady and peaceful and my heart was happy to have a moment of peace.

That night Josh and Alicia came for dinner, presents, and cake and ice cream.
After we finished dinner and were about to open the presents I told him he must use the potty before we continued (I think it had been about ten hours since he'd last gone....seriously.) He dashed into the bathroom, closed the door, then threw it open again and said
"Guys. Remember, I'm excited!!"
as if we could forget.

Nicholas wanted a cake that either had "googly eyes" or looked like the night sky. We went with the latter.
On any other week, I would have gone a little more gung-ho for the cake decorating. But he's four, he doesn't care, I had a carazy week going on, and this is the cake we ended up with.