Garrett and Paige turn FOUR

It's really hard for me to believe that Garrett and Paige turned four today.  I know people tell you that time will fly by quickly, but that truly is the case.  They decided together that they wanted to have a "camping themed" birthday party, which we thought was a brilliant idea.  We decorated with Parks signs... some that we bought and some that Steve custom designed.

Garrett and Paige were very specific about what their cake should look like.  It had to have two tents on it with their heads poking out of them.  Thankfully I was able to make something that fit that bill!

Of course every good camp out has to have camp food.  So we made hot dogs and had fruit & veggie platters.  And of course we had to have smores.  However I decided open flames and roasting marshmallows was not going to work with preschoolers, so I made "smore pops" instead by dipping marshmallows in chocolate and rolling them in graham cracker crumbs.

Steve set up two tents in the house for the kids to play in.  He had a smaller tent shelter up in the TV room and our larger 12-person tent set-up just outside on the patio.  The larger tent acted as an additional play room for the kids to enjoy.  Here's the birthday twins roasting some fake marshmallows in the indoor tent.

Steve spent a ton of time engineering a fake fire by nailing together firewood around a heating fan and making tissue paper "flames" that moved about with the fan.  It was pretty darn brilliant and the kids had a blast with it.  Here's the cousins enjoying the "fire".

The highlight of the party was the biologist we hired from Nature's Critters who came and showed the kids a variety of animals and let them touch them.  She brought a tortoise, a bearded dragon lizard, a tree frog, some hissing cockroaches and a rather large python named Monty.  I was proud of how fearless my kids were to touch the animals.

Then it we got to sing "Happy Birthday" to the birthday twins.  Molly helped them blow out the candles.  Each tent was made out of cake, so Garrett and Paige each got to eat their own tent.

Then it was time to open presents.  That got a little chaotic and I had to call Steve in to manage Garrett so I could help Paige.  Garrett wanted to rip through every gift as fast as he could, whereas Paige just sat there patiently until I was able to read each card to her.  She really cared who gave her every single gift.

All in all, it was a very successful party and I believe everyone had a fabulous time.  And the most important part was that Garrett and Paige felt loved and celebrated when it was all said and done.