Buzz Turns Four

Today is an amazingly awesome day, and its awesomeness is two-fold. Our Buzz turns four today and it's also my final day at work.

7 months

9 months

14 months

One of my most favorite pictures of him, two and a half years.

For Buzz, we celebrated with a firehouse bash this past Saturday (July 5th, which coincidentally was my actual birthday,).  A friend of mine with four, going on five, told me once that each of her girls has a birthday party every other year. It seems so logical now. Throwing this party took it out of me, and it was only a casual backyard BBQ! Last year, we stayed in and celebrated Nolan with a small family affair. This year, we wanted to go big and throw him a true celebration including friends, cousins, neighbors, and playmates. It was also the first time that we'd be having many friends over since tackling projects in our house.  Our sweet boy looked forward to this party for months. 

I think kids birthday parties can be a little bit cray-cray these days. For me, balancing the cooking, deep cleaning of the house, tidying up our yard, and a few decorations, all with two kids running around, was exhausting. I wanted the party to be thoughtful and fun, but I didn't want to kill myself with loads of details and decor. Luckily, Buzz was completely happy with how it all came together.

I unfortunately did a terrible job of snapping pics that day (as I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off, right up until the last moment), and Jon was manning the grill, but I managed to pull together a few that were worthy of sharing.

One of Nolans besties from preschool came , which had Nolan over the moon. 

These two are pretty sweet together

(in a wild,and bouncing-off-the-walls kind of way). 

There was a pinata.

A couple of months prior, Nolan was too shy to try a pinata at a friends house. 

But not this time.

Now knowing that it's filled with his absolute favorite thing (CANDY!)

he couldn't wait to see that thing dangling in the air.

Somewhere along the way in life, I've discovered there are two things that I am terrible at:

baking cakes and sewing. 

So I left the cake baking to Costco this year, 

and can I just tell you it saved me much heartache and probably a few tears. 

It was fun having our yard filled with so many kids, 

and made me appreciate our home even more.

We are very much enjoying the little boy that Nolan is becoming. 

Here's to another full weekend ahead, including some winery style celebrating with friends, 

an airplane show at our local airport, and my whole family is headed into town.