it's birthday time, race fans!

ethan has been talking about his racecar party for the last few weeks...to everyone who asks about his birthday. i really cannot think of any other way to have celebrated his third birthday. he is still as into driving his little cars all over the house as he was this time last year! pregnancy has taken over a significant part of the planning portion of my brain, so the preparations for ethan's party this year were somewhat last minute and slightly thrown together. but ethan had his friends, his cake, and his cars there. and brian and i finished the racecar sign at midnight the night before his party. so all was well. :)

the hit of the party was the racing ramp that brian built. all the kids, big and small, loved choosing their favorite matchbox cars to race. most cars had some major alignment issues and did not make it to the finish line before falling off the sides, but that just added another challenge to the race. :)



i love these next two pictures... i didn't realize this until today, but the first shot is of the daddies, and the next picture is of their sons in almost the exact same positions! how sweet is that!!



brian really enjoyed racing with the kids. it was nice to just sit back and let him entertain them!


i'm not sure what has caught caroline's attention in this next picture, but apparently it was something pretty exciting! that is her new "turtle face"... daddy loves it!



gram made another cute cake this year! as soon as ethan saw the racetrack cake, he exclaimed, "i'll put more cars on the cake!" thank you, mom, for your hard work on the cake.




here is ethan with his sweet friends...
they helped him blow out his candle after he tried a few times.



our little cake cousins!


i forgot to take a picture of the whole setup, but basically we had tables set up around the racetrack ramp. i tied checkered flag balloons to bottles of oil (you can see them in the background of some of the pictures), and we hung racing banners around the room. the "sponsor" for the ethan 300 was chickfila. :) very appropriate since that's what we ate in a hurry right before his party!




we chose to ask our family and friends to not bring gifts this year. i am SO GLAD that we did it this way! ethan was not concerned about presents in the very least, and for that i am thankful. we wanted the focus to be on praising God for another year of his life, not on the things people could give to him. (a sweet friend of mine asked a few weeks ago, "ethan, what do you want for your birthday?" and he gave her a blank stare and said nothing! he has never been asked that question by us! it made me smile!) he is so happy and content with the toys that he has, and we surely do not need one more toy in this house. we gave him a t-ball set, complete with "waffle balls" and a bat "with a baseball man on it". the grandparents gave him "experience" type gifts... an annual pass to the zoo, and a session of soccertots that he will go to with daddy once a week in the fall. (and my mom also gave him the cutest dry erase and magnet books!) even with just a couple of presents to open at his party, he was totally content and did not notice that a pile of presents was missing. i also appreciated that today, he enjoyed playing with his t-ball set most of the day instead of being completely overwhelmed with a mass of new toys! i do not say all of that to imply that we have not been thankful for the generous gifts given to our children in the past... but that it was very freeing to not "follow the norm" for ethan's birthday this year in the way of gifts. we may not do that every year, but it certainly was the right decision this year!



sweet 6 year old natalie was so cute about the non-gift idea... she gets so excited about picking out just the right gift that her friends will love, so when her mom told her that they weren't bringing a gift to ethan's party, she said, "no gifts? really?! REALLY!? well, i'll just draw him a picture!" so she brought ethan the cutest little picture of a person in the shape of a letter "B" getting a lot of presents from his friends on his birthday ("b" for birthday, she told me!). :)

ethan loves his nana, pappy, and gram! thanks for celebrating with us! notice the trophy that gram conjured up for the party. :) so cute!



oh! i almost forgot about the tire-toss game! this ended up being really hilarious. i had it in my head that a fun game would be for the kids to toss balls into an old tire. well, i didn't take time to hunt down an old tire, but at the last minute, i happened to find a "tire" inflatable innertube at walmart. so brian hung it from the ceiling with fishing line, and we were ready to play! well, the kids got to the party, and everybody started hanging on it as if it were a tire swing. it was just irresistible! a few minutes later, we looked over, and the tire was almost completely deflated! the fishing line had sliced the float open! a big 3 inch gash! so we just taped it up and blew it up again. by the time we got around to throwing the balls through it, it looked pathetic! the kids still had a great time attempting to hit the hole, but it was a bit floppy. :) i couldn't stop laughing at it.



so another year has gone by, another party is over. ethan has grown up so much in this last year. as i've been writing this post, i've looked back at his 2nd birthday party pictures at least a dozen times. and though he seems like such a big boy now, we will probably look back at these pictures of the kids racing cars 10 years from now and just gush about how they were just babies! i do praise God for every day of his life. it's so easy to take it all for granted. every day truly is a gift. thank You, God, for the gift of ethan!