Colton's CARS birthday party

Colton turns 6 on Tuesday, and he requested a Lightning McQueen party!

 These free ticket invitations were so easy to make here!

  We told him he could invite 5 friends, and he was a total sweetheart requesting that I include in the invitation a special note requesting that Colton's invited friends not talk about his party at school, so as not to make the other boys in his class feel left out.

As our first activity while kids were arriving, we printed Cars activities and coloring sheets from this website.

We chose all Lightning McQueen party goods, and Colton picked out hotdogs, Mac and Cheese, strawberries, car fruit snacks, Cheez-Its, apple juice, and ice cream sundaes for his meal.

We moved all the furniture off to the side of the living room for a big play area for the main activity of the party (making roads with road tape), and Colton brought his cars speedway track and road rug downstairs.

Colton picked out party bags including Lightning McQueen sunglasses, Cars character super balls, Cars stampers, and cars fruit snacks.

Colton was SO excited for his party!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I love watching Colton interact with his kindergarten friends.  So much laughing and fun!  He really has such sweet friends!

After his friends had arrived, each boy got one roll of road tape to make roads however he wished all over the living room/kitchen.  It's basically masking tape with a road pattern, and is easily removable!  We also had a few rolls of regular masking tape for making parking lots, etc.

Aiden

 Jaxon

 Adrian

 Isaac

Colton
 The boys were so entertained for soooo long!  Creating, driving, racing, playing....a few rolls of tape made for tons of fun all the way until dinner time, when I had to interrupt them to come eat :).

 Paul was the DJ of the party, playing music from the cars movies from a playlist on YouTube.   We made the party an optional drop-off party, and a few moms/siblings stayed.  This little brother enjoyed hanging out with Paul :).

 The girls played dolls upstairs for some of the party...and spied on the boys with their binoculars for some too! :)

  Dinner!  Left to Right (Isaac, Aiden, Adrian, Colton, Jaxon).  During dinner Colton picked out a story for me to read the group from his Cars storybook.

 Blowing out 6 candles

So pumped he blew them all out in one breath ;)

Video of Colton Candles:

It was a perfectly "Colton" party and my favorite part was watching him and his friends have so much fun together doing the things Colton loves to do!   Looking forward to more celebrations with family coming up!  Happy early birthday, Colton!  Love you!!!!!

Easter and Sibling Pics

He is Risen.  He is Risen Indeed.

The week before Easter we read or listened to the Easter story from all four Gospels. (Summer has the New Testament on CD, so we listened to it together on car trips or at home).  So, before our Good Friday service, the kids had all listened to the entire account of Easter week from Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. It was a fantastic way to lead up to Easter and keep the real meaning at the focus.  We had great conversations and noted different details, discussed fulfillment of prophecies, and talked about our favorite parts (my favorite part is when the temple curtain dividing man from God tore in two from top to bottom at the exact moment Jesus died!).  Because it was spring break, we had extra chat time during meals, in the car, and at home with all three kids home.  I loved it!

Over spring break I took Colton in for his 6 year pictures (to come in a following post), and took a few of all three kids in their Easter clothes.  They are growing so fast, and I want to freeze each moment!  

We celebrated Easter with Grandma and Grandpa K and Uncle Eric, Auntie Kristin, Teddy, and Charlie on Saturday.  I loved the Easter egg hunt Grandma made that incorporated the resurrection eggs.  Each egg they found had a item representing a part of the Easter story and we read that part together and discussed the story during the hunt.  I love anything that keeps the real meaning of Easter as the focus!  Summer and Colton also made an egg hunt for Grandma and Grandpa, where each of the clues represented a piece of the story as well.  They had fun working together, hiding the eggs, and watching Grandma and Grandpa search :).  We also had a delicious meal and enjoyed great family time.

resurrection rolls

Empty Tomb Cake

Sticker books after the egg hunt

On Easter Sunday, we invited our neighbor, Mr. Ken, to come to our service with us, and then back to our house for lunch, egg decorating, and egg hunt.  He gave each kid a giant bucket of candy!!!!

Listening to Daddy tell about the hidden eggs (we did an "inside" hunt this year as it was freezing outside!).  Summer's 12 green eggs were hidden the hardest, Colton's 12 blue eggs were hidden medium hard, and Larkyn's 12 pink and purple eggs with hidden with Larkyn in mind!

 ***Sidenote: if you think our living room looks a little different, it does.  We have been working on house projects for the past two months including painting walls, painting baseboards and trim, putting in new ballusters, removing our recalled potbelly fireplace stove, replacing doors, etc.  There will be a blog post at some point when we are finished with the projects, but for now we are living in transition - so the furniture arrangement changes weekly depending on what we are working on!***

Summer made Mr. Ken a Easter comic book that tells the story of Easter.

Ready to paint eggs!

Grandma and Grandpa T (who are currently suffering in Hawaii ;)) sent a super fun package to the kids for Easter with gift cards to our Christian bookstore and windup chicks.  The kids had a blast playing with their chicks all evening, racing them, playing stories with them, and making boxes with Easter grass for their chicks!  They are currently planning to make a chick playground out of boxes...

Happy Easter everyone!