A Spiderman Birthday!

My nephew Noah turned 5 and had a Spiderman/Super Hero birthday this past weekend!

I had the honor of making the cake & birthday hat. I love to do this for the kids. It was a little nervewracking because I was using a new brand of fondant and was imprinting it to look like brick...I thought it would be a piece of cake. I think I warmed the fondant too much and it was too pliable and well, it was a big mess. And it was too late to go get more fondant so I had to get creative with covering up a lot of mistakes. It was a little hairy there for a while but I think it turned out okay.

We went to a place called JJ Jump that has all sorts of huge inflatable bouncy houses and slides. The kids LOVE it.

Between the kids being on the go and there being no natural light, my photos weren't great, but the subjects were as cute as ever.

I had fun going down the slide with the Bug. She LOVED it. She looks like this in every picture!

However, I was traded in for Aunt Michelle as the Bug's preferred sliding parter. Kaitlin loves Aunt Michelle. I'm so glad. Girls are scarce in our family--we need to stick together! :)

I have a lot of blurry, half in the frame/half out of the frame photos of Andrew and Noah from this part of the party. This is the best we could manage of the 2 of them. Dan took this one.

The boys were all so sweet with Kaitlin. I overheard them disagreeing over who got to help her up the stairs of the slide.

At one point Isaiah took Kaitlin's hand to see what else she might like to do.

Here's Isaiah. Big brother and protector of the birthday boy.

And the birthday boy himself when he saw his cake. See that smile? That's why I love to make their cakes. (Thank you Mike & Michelle, for letting me do this!) It's a love note from their Aunt Kathy.

Noah received lots of great gifts. I love this picture because you can see his sweet dimples. I don't think he could get any cuter if he tried.

I know some people have children who will sit and smile for a photo.

This is not the case in our family. The cousins despise group photos. The best we can do is gather them together (sometimes bribe them) and in this photo I just gave them the option of making a silly face. The goal is to simply get them into the same photo all at the same time.

I have extremely low expectations. And while this photo would probably be deleted in some families, this qualifies a "success" in ours.

Happy Birthday, sweet Noah!

We love you so very very much!