The "Real" Birthday

On Friday, we celebrated Eli's "real" birthday. Again, we are in disbelief at how quickly the last year has flown by!

Wasn't this just yesterday?

Mark had to work most of the day but Eli and I did some fun stuff to pass the time until he came home that evening to celebrate.

Eli got to paint some cool pictures with his big-boy paints and paintbrushes.

He also helped me bake his birthday cake and clean-up afterwards. (aka lick the spoons/spatulas)

While he napped, I made the "firetruck" birthday cake that had been requested. This year I decided to branch-out a bit but think the end result was pretty successful.

When his Daddy got home from work, we gave Eli some of his presents from us before his birthday dinner.

He got an Acer, a "camera" complete with an additional Grem and Acer, and a Lightening McQueen. For those of you familiar with Cars 2, the boy is obsessed with the "Lemons" in the movie. We aren't quite sure why he loves the "bad cars" so much, but he was pretty psyched when he opened all of these. The reactions I got on video were priceless!

We had some special surprise guests join us for Eli's birthday dinner that evening; Ms. Ashley and her dog Maddie, who brought an awesome dino birthday balloon attached to her collar. Eli chose a meal of spaghetti with meatballs, salad, and bread.

After dinner, Dada surprised Eli with his final birthday gift from us. He was pretty excited to learn there was one last present to open!

Our last gift was a set of train tracks to use with his trains. The boy had been asking for some tracks for at least a year and was beyond thrilled to see that he would finally have some of his very own to play with. Keeping this present a secret had been killing Mark and me for quite some time!

Then it was time for some cake and ice cream!

Little stinker started eating the gum-drop "lights" before I could even cut the cake!

Eli finished off his birthday playing with his new train tracks and was in absolute heaven.

Happy 3rd Birthday to our Eli! We are so blessed to have been chosen by God to be your parents and are very excited to see what fun year four will bring!