Happy 3rd Birthday Axel!

Since our last post Axel and his best bud Rishaan both turned 3 and had fun birthday parties. Rishaan's birthday was on Sunday March 18th. His party was the first well organized kid party that we have attended thus far. His parents had a clown come for the first hour of the party. He did balloons while people were arriving and then did a funny juggling act and even had some of the kids help out. Here Axel and Rishaan are getting ready to help by wearing the funny wigs.

Once the kids were properly attired they were able to help out with one of the tricks. We were so impressed that Axel volunteered and wasn't afraid. Keith and I were super proud of him. He did a great job of keeping the plate on the stick. By the end of the trick his plate stopped spinning, but it still did not drop. All in all it was a great party and we had a great time.

Now if we fast forward almost two weeks to this past Friday. Axel had his 3 year check up. He is now back on the charts at a whopping 34.25 inches tall, which puts him at .83% and 25.5 pounds which puts him at 2%. Although he didn't grow as much as I thought he did since his allergy appointment two months ago, I was very excited he was back on the charts. He is definitely, eating more, so hopefully that will equate to a big growth spurt in the near future!

Yesterday, was Axel's big day! At 5:59pm, 3 years ago, we were blessed with the most beautiful gift from God....the birth of Axel. He brings so much joy to us and those who are around him, it was great to celebrate his birthday with a fun little party for him.

Axel had 7 friends (with their families) over, in addition to his babysitter Annika and her family. Auntie and Uncle Ryan and Tyler and Cynthia, who are like an Aunt and Uncle to Axel, also made it for the festivities. I did about an hour of research on different games that we could do out of home made materials. Keith thought they were all too old for the kids. When I went to pick up the balloons I found pin the tail on the Donkey and a hot potato game that I thought ought to be just about right for 3 year olds. Well, just an FYI for mom's of young children.....it is probably better to wait until they are 4 or 5 for game playing at birthday parties. It was too hard to get the kids organized and to get them all to participate. Oh, well, I had to try :)

For his birthday I asked Axel if he would like a car cake or a Thomas the train cake, and he quickly answered Thomas. I had already purchased the entire car theme birthday decorations the month previous at the dollar store, but decided it didn't matter if his cake didn't match the car theme decorations.

The cake turned out fairly well for our first all out cake decorating. I managed to do Thomas and quickly burnt out of ideas for the cargo cakes. Luckily, Keith did a great job of rescuing me by decorating the remaining cargo cakes and fixing the caboose to look somewhat presentable after I had maxed out on my creativity for the day.

Unfortunately, I don't have very many pictures of the day. The ones I do have are blurry and Auntie's camera ran out of juice. I did get an okay shot of Axel enjoying his birthday cake.

And here is a decent picture of Axel enjoying his new favorite mode of transportation thanks to Grandpa Brian. Yes, it is even consistent with the car party theme!

We are now gearing up for Easter fun next week. We hope everyone enjoys the celebration of our salvation from our amazing Lord and Savior, Jesus! God Bless!