Austin's Pirate Party

I cannot believe that Austin is 5 years old! Time really has flown by!

He decided to have a Pirate Party this year...
I'm not sure whether I had more fun or he did, hopefully he did!!
I couldn't believe all of the fabulous ideas out there!
I spent WAY to much time planning and executing this fun party,
but I think that it was all worth it!

This is the vinyl that I put on our front storm door...
The boys loved it and didn't want me to take it off, but I thought that peoplethat didn't know we had a pirate party might be little weirded out!

This is the Jolly Roger Flag that I hung from our banister.

Decorations from the Stampin' Up! Pirate Party Kit that I added vinyl to.

I found these cute cupcake wrappers and sails here
and this AWESOME frosting recipe here
and I put the sails on sucker sticks.

We turned a box of Cap'n Crunch into Cap'n Austin Crunch and served it as a snack.

For some reason, I have never been able to throw away wipes containers thinking that I might need them someday, well, today was the day! I spray painted 12 wipes containers black and added gold vinyl pirates names to each of them. These were the boys' treasure boxes. I filled them with eye patches, bandanas, telescopes, a treasure map, and their loot bag. To start the party off, they decorated their treasure boxes and telescopes and colored their treasure maps that I found here.

Last year at Austin's birthday party, I let the boys play in the bedrooms and get all of the toys out. I decided that I was not going to go through 3 hours of clean up again this year, so I put these signs on each of the bedroom doors.
I also kept them busy with lots of activities and games!

Here is the Birthday Captain, ready for his friends to arrive. The party started at 10am. He woke up at about 7:00 and was REALLY anxious all morning for everyone to get there!

We played LOTS of games! After they decorated their boxes, we played pin the treasure chest on the treasure map (I got it at the Dollar Store). Then we played Cannon Ball POP. I filled about 45 black balloons with candy and blew them up. I gave each of the kids a toothpick and told them to get the candy out. That game was a hit! After that, we Walked the Plank and had sword fights with bread sticks on the plank! They really liked this as well, I only wish that I had bought more than one box of bread sticks!

After the sword fights, we played Pass the Cannonball (or Hot Potato).

After the fun and games, we had ice cream cake from DQ and cupcakes!

After cake, we had the log awaited TREASURE HUNT! Everyone was really excited about this!
Jared made an awesome treasure box that I filled with mini treasure chests for each of the boys that had Pop Rocks and chocolate gold coins in them. Jared also made a treasure map with clues for each place to go...the bathroom had kaleidoscopes, Austin's room had pirate whistles, Alex's room had candy necklaces, Ring Pops, and pirate suckers, and the treasure box was downstairs. They had a great time trying to figure out where to go next!

Here is Jared's handy work!

Here are all of the boys with their pirate gear on! They were all such troopers! It was a lot of work, but everyone sure had a good time! Austin is already planning his party for next year!

Alex and His Stuffed Animals!

Alex LOVES all of his stuffed animals! The other morning when I went in his room, I found him cuddled up with them! He is so funny! He knows all of their names and cannot go to bed unless he has them all in there with him! We took the boys to Build-a-Bear and made Alex a monkey for Valentine's day. He carries him all around the house all day long! We thought it fit because he is definitely our little monkey!

Valentine's Day!

Austin helped me make our Valentine's cookies on Sunday!

He really enjoys helping out lately!
The boys thoroughly enjoyed eating the cookies when they were all done! We had to deliver them to people that night so they would stop asking for MORE COOKIES!!!

SNOW, SNOW, AND MORE SNOW!!!

We have gotten almost 2 feet of snow just in the month of February!! The boys are loving it, but have a hard time playing in it because it is so deep, they just kind of sink!! Luckily for me our cute little neighbor boys are always willing to play with them outside, so I don't have to go out there!! Needless to say...I am ready for Spring and some warmer weather! Hopefully we don't get anymore snow!!!Pretty soon our mailbox is going to be buried!!
Our truck pretty much is buried!

Austin and Alex love to go out on the deck to do their snow dance!!

Bruiser isn't a big fan of the snow...he can barely even move in it. He is almost totally covered when he goes out on the grass, he has to jump to get anywhere! It is pretty entertaining!

Austin's new shelves

We were trying to decide what to do with all of the new toys that the boys received for Christmas and came to the conclusion that we needed to organize the closets in the boys' rooms. So, after pricing out some shelves at Lowe's, we decided to start with Austin's closet and do Alex's sometime down the road. Anyway, here is a picture of the shelves in the Austin's closet. It is amazing how much more organized we are now!

Bowling

We had some coupons for the local bowling alley, so we took the boys bowling for their first time. They seemed to have fun! They loved to push the ball down the ramp and then clap and cheer, I am not sure if they knew why they were cheering, but they were having fun!

Christmas 2009

This was definitely a fun Christmas for Austin! He was so excited for Santa to come to our house! We were getting ready for bed on Christmas Eve and he looked out the window and saw Rudolph's nose blinking brightly in the sky off in the distance, so he wanted to hurry and get into bed so that Santa didn't miss our house.

Both of the boys were in bed at 7:30!
The first thing that he did when he woke up was look to see if Santa ate the treats that he left for him and HE DID and left he left him a note. As you can see, he is little excited!
Then, he went to see what Santa left for him! He got everything that he asked Santa for, guess he was a good boy this year!

Alex was also thrilled with what Santa left for him!

Austin had so much fun opening the presents, that he opened them ALL, it didn't matter who they were for, he helped everyone!

I think that we set up and destroyed this track at least 5 times throughout the day!!

Check out our Christmas MESS! We had a wonderful Christmas! The boys are very excited about all of their new toys!! Thanks so much everybody!!