Tate's Fourth Birthday Party

So here we are at Tate's fourth birthday party. How he is already four, I don't know. I'm sorry it took me so long to get this up, but I have been busy and oddly not in a blogging mood lately. There will be more pictures to come about what we did the week Tracy was here, just don't expect any wild and fun things because we weren't at Tracy's house, we were at mine. I have truly come to realize that I am no match for Tracy and her mom. I swear they have extra batteries somewhere, or are cyborgs. Not really sure which.

On to the party! It was nicely low-key and we had few people there. I thought about inviting kids from his school but then I didn't know where the number would stop, so I didn't. Without you all here, it was small group indeed, but no less fun.

Here is the birthday boy and daddy at our gate entrance where the "paleontologists" came to get their gear.

The dinosaur foot prints welcomed everyone into the 'dig'.



They received a bag with their name on it and a hat.

The hats were a big hit!
Very stylin' Miss Valerie!
We even got a hat on Mikie!
Placed around the yard were these posters describing different dinosaurs.




Here is the Excavation Site.
The kids getting to swing with a stegosaurus, triceratops or a tyrannosaurus.
This is the Paleontologists Laboratory.
Checking out the triceratops and her nest.


The Cretaceous Craft Table.

The Pteranodon in Training. Isn't that a great nest? I still have it up - thanks Tracy!


The kids painting their ceramic dinosaurs.

Ayden didn't like to have paint on her hands.

Everyone liked painting their dinosaurs and did a great job!
After the kids were done with painting their dinosaurs they got to decorate their bag with dinosaur stickers.

As you can see, Miss Val really liked her hat!


Once the 'paleontologists' were done decorating their dinosaurs and bags, I sat down and read them the story of Curious George and the Dinosaur. In this story they learned how paleontologists use brushes, shovels, and sifters to help them find dinosaur bones.

We then headed over to the Excavation site where they used their 'paleontologist' tools to find dinosaur bones.
Using a brush to carefully remove debris from the dinosaur bones.

After successful finds the 'paleontologists' matched the dinosaur bones they found with the different posters to learn more about their type of dinosaur.

Grant found a triceratops!
Tate and Ayden found velociraptors!
Annabelle found a pteranodon!
Zachary found a velociraptor!
Mikie found tyrannosaurus!
After a very successful excavation we were off to find more dinosaur bones. This site was in the volcano, Mt. Tate. (I used the tower end of my playset to make a volcano with red lava streamers)
This site had been previously worked on by other paleontologists so their job was to pick a dinosaur head out of a bag and then use a flashlight (to help them see in the dark volcano) to help them find the other parts to their dinosaurs. (all the dinosaurs were a different color)

Here they are getting instructions about how fragile dinosaur bones are and the one big rule is to not step in the square where the dinosaur bones actually are. When I explained this, and all the kids are ready to bolt away and find more bones, Mikie asks this question: "What if there is an oval?" So I had to explain that if you find an oval, rectangle, rhombus, triangle or circle it's ok to step in those shapes, just NOT the square.
Ahhh! The fragile dinosaur bones that are partially excavated. (In the sacred square :)
The kids had to collect all their parts. . .
use the flashlights to blind themselves. . .
and then get a parent or other adult to help put it together. The Stellers are very intense on these types of projects.
Thank goodness for grandma! My mom drove up for the day and helped Tate put together his dinosaur, which was a dimetrodon.
Mr. John helped Mikie put his together while Tracy took pictures. Thanks for coming John and thanks for helping out. (Not many guys would come to a four year old's party minus their wife and child!)
Tate loved his dinosaur.
Once these activities were done it was time to eat! The lava juice was a throw together of pineapple juice, ginger ale and raspberry sherbet and it was soooo good!
Don't you just love the dinosaur cups?
Brachiosaurus Burgers, and yes, they are actually shaped like a brachiosaurus!
So are the buns!
Dino-mite Nuggets!
Herbivore Dip and chips.
Fossil Fruit Salad. Notice the bones in the strata?
Specimen of other dinosaurs.
Mesosoic Muffins. These are my zucchini muffins and were a big hit.
I bought an ice mold shaped like these dinosaur bones but instead of ice we used it with jello. Turned out pretty good, huh? This was Boagie to the rescue, these were our second attempt. (Just a note: Anytime you use jello in a mold make sure you spray the mold with oil FIRST!) The jello bones are on a base of butterscotch pudding with crushed graham crackers sprinkled over the top.
After lunch we did a couple of dinosaur egg hunts. The first was getting a hatching light up dinosaur from the triceratop's nest. We had a discussion about telling the triceratops mommy that we were going to take good care of her 'babies' so that she wouldn't mind if we touched them.
Then there was an actual dinosaur egg hunt. The mission was to go out and find two dinosaur eggs and in them were little dinosaurs. (Of course!)
Here is the cake. This was a collaboration between Andy and I and it worked out beautifully. I made the cakes, put the shapes together and put a base layer of frosting on, then Andy did all the outside frosting and I finished it up with the yellow 'spines', eyes, mouth and toenails. All our cakes will be a collaboration from now on. Poor Ayden, for cakes it is Tate 3 (one cake I didn't make for him) and Ayden 0 (no cake I've made for her has turned out).
Blowing out the candles. Tracy says I do it differently then everyone else because I have them blow out the candles and then we sing. I need a poll, how does everyone else do it?
They even got to fly with the pteranodon!
Enjoying one of the suckers I had made. (I mean made for me, not that I made them. Ju-C Suckers - you can choose from a variety of shapes, colors and flavors!) Very cute!
Paleontologist laboratory decorations.
The only shot I got of Tracy all day. She was quite busy behind the scenes doing all the work, while I played up front with the kids. Thanks Tracy!
The swag. Ok, you know how when you buy things in pieces and you don't really know how much you've bought until you put it all together in one place? That is what happened to me. When I listed all the things that the kids were going to take home it was quite a sizeable amount of loot! (They got to choose 1 book out of the four)
We had to write a list to keep track of it all!
Once the party was done we packed up the perishables and headed out to Miniature World to play mini golf and ride go-karts, they also have a little train but it was not in operation the day we went.

Tate's favorite thing was the go-karts, of course!
See how my son is actually holding a golf club? Well look really well because this is the only time that he will hold it. He played one hole and never again.
We got a cute pic though!
Mikie and Zachary were in heaven, but I think the Wyman family won't go mini golfing again anytime soon. Neither of my kids played!

Andy won, of course. Once we were done here we headed out to Tate's restaurant of choice (which turned out to be Olive Garden) and then home for some much needed sleep!
Tracy deserves the most kudos for this party. She did all the cute stuff and it would have looked nothing like this if it had not been for her, so thanks again Tracy, we loved having you visit!

Happy fourth birthday Tate. We love you so much!