Birthday Fun and a Library Tour

Last night, we celebrated Stuart's birthday. Nicholas and I picked out some fun decorations and he helped me decide where to put them up. He wanted to use his sidewalk chalk to decorate the driveway for Stuart to see when he came home from work. He helped me make a giant arrow that said "Birthday Boy" for Stuart to park his truck. We drew balloons and presents and wrote "We love you".



When Stuart walked in the door, we were ready for him. We showered him with lots and lots of confetti. Nicholas just kept on throwing it long after the initial surprise was over. He loved being told to throw it up and make a mess!

Stuart got mostly tools for his birthday. Nicholas enjoyed handing presents to Stuart and even helped him unwrap some!





We enjoyed a nice dinner then pulled out the chocolate turtle cake that Nicholas had picked out. I loaded it up with 37 candles and even had two little sparkler candles on it. The sparklers overheated from all the other candles and they had to be removed. The other candles became a bit of an inferno by themselves. Hindsight being 20/20, I should not have put them so close together. Next year, I think I'll play it safer and just get one of those candles in the shape of a "3" and an "8" so I only have to light 2 candles!



For our educational playgroup this morning, I arranged for us to get a behind-the-scenes tour of our local library. They let us come in 30 minutes before they opened to the public so we had the whole place to ourselves.

Nicholas loves talking to the fish in the aquarium. It's part of our regular routine when we visit the library.



Although his most favorite part of the tour was definitely getting to see what happens as people return books through the depository slot in the wall. He loved watching the books slide down the chute on the other side of the wall. He and another little boy in our group took turns with one putting the book in the slot while the other watched it go down the chute.



We had a great tour and then it was time for the library to open. I gave each child a canvas bag to keep for their very own book bag to use to carry their library books home. I also gave them a little bookmark that says, "I Love To Read!".



As you can see from the picture above, Nicholas insisted on wearing his tool belt for the library tour. As we were leaving the house, he said that he wanted to have all of his tools available "because I might need to fix something for the librarian". As we were leaving the library, he said in a cute little disappointed voice, "I can't believe they didn't need me to fix something for them!"

After we got some books, we headed to a park for a picnic. I gave the children little bags of gummy worms and called them gummy book worms to go with our library theme.

We had lots of fun running and playing at the park. We even found a really cool tree to climb!