Argh! Where's Ellen when you need her?!?!

On Saturday we had Leighton's 6th birthday party.  Like last year, we had it at Michael's.  We gave Leighton some other choices, but he loves art and chose Michael's again.  And both kids have asked to go back there for their birthdays next fall, too!  We'll see if they change their minds before then ...

All of the kids painted and decorated a large wooden letter, a picture frame, and a couple of sea creatures.  It was fun to see how different they all turned out.

After art time, we had some pizza (had it delivered this year for the convenience, but the taste of the Costco pizzas is SO much better that I think we will go back to picking up from there for any pizza parties in the future!) and then it was cake time.  When I asked Leighton what he wanted on his cake, he chose a dolphin and a crab (and a rainbow cake inside), so we went with an under the sea theme for the cake.  I also made some cookies to go with the theme to wrap up with sea life stickers as a party favor.  If any of you recall, there was a lot of error and time involved in last year's cake, but this year I was fairly on top of things and had a MUCH better skillset to see me through!  I wasn't even up until 3am like I had been a few nights prior finishing up cookies and cakes!

Little helper with the blowing!

Is he blowing out the candles or kissing the dolphin?!?!

Both kids have the exact same expression going on here - made me laugh!

SO much love!

When we got home from the party, Leighton opened his presents form his friends and of course wanted to play with everything.  Unfortunately (well, it's not really unfortunate that he received such awesome presents, it was just unfortunate that we had a late birthday party and the kids needed to get to bed!) almost everything he started to open was a 'no time for that before bed' gift.  Except one ... or so I thought.  I was all excited to tell him that I loved Connect 4 when I was a kid and was eager to play a game or two with him before bed.  Until I realized it wasn't just a simple Connect 4 game - it was one of the super cool build your own board game out of LEGO-style pieces Connect 4.  Um .... "no time for that!"

After the kids were in bed, I was explaining to Roy what the Connect 4 game entailed before we could play the actual game.  His response?  "Argh!  Where's Ellen when you need her?"  And then we laughed that my mom is always so great about sitting with Leighton as they set up and figure out all these types of things.  Unfortunately (again, it's not unfortunate that my parents got to go on an amazing vacation to visit my sister and see much of Croatia, it's unfortunate for us that the best time to go there was also right before Leighton's birthday so traveling here immediately after wasn't really practical!) she wasn't here.  So that left me to take the reigns on that one (Roy has been pioneering the major LEGO building adventures) the next morning.  The kids got in the way helped for a little while and then got bored and went to play or watch TV or bother spend quality time with Daddy while I finished.  It took me a while, so it was a good thing I started first thing in the morning!