My Big Birthday Boy!

I can't believe how much my Derek has grown!  He has been such a fun little boy to raise so far; sweet, considerate, loving, and full of personality!  We are enjoying every stage of his development so far, and look forward to the  coming years.  This is the first year that Derek had a "friend" party.  He really wanted to have his friends over, and I will admit I was nervous.  A little nervous about having to entertain a bunch of 3-5 year-old boys, but more about not having time to plan for it or a good time to even have it.  So I decided to simplify.  We had the party the Friday before his birthday and kept it to one hour.  I didn't plan any games.  I just covered a couple of ply boards we had on hand with black plastic table cloth and pulled out all of Dereks car building toys and trains.  The boys had a blast building and racing!  After they spent about 20 minutes doing that we had cake and ice cream, opened presents, and then I sent them out back to play until their parents came to pick them up.  It was perfect!

I made fondant using suggestions from my cousin Tisha and sister-in-law Jill and it turned out really well.  Aubrey made the mountains, clouds, and rocks on the cake and we topped it with some of CARS duplo legos.  I was most nervous about making the cake since gluten free cakes are so unpredictable and tried and tried to talk Derek into cupcakes but he was set on putting his duplo guys on a cake.  The cake was not pretty, so I was very happy with how the fondant covered it up, ha!

On Sunday (his actual birthday) he opened family presents.

Loving the Webkinz Hummingbird he got

He picked out this hat from the Children's Place.  As soon as he saw it he put it on and was sneaking around the store pretending to be Agent P from Phineas and Ferb.

After he got his hat we all had to come up with agent names, and everybody had to go get their fedoras.  Here is everybody with their "agent hat."  

 He got some awesome new books for story time.   

And here come the wheels...

So excited to learn to ride!!