Call Her Blessed: Thomas is 3!

I can't believe my little ~~monkey~~ Thomas is 3 years old! We had a fun party to celebrate his joyful little self, complete with monkey cake, monkey pinata, and lots of wonderful friends and family.

To my Thomas - I love you, sweet boy! I love your energetic and joyful spirit. I love how brave and bold you are. I love how sweet and thoughtful and helpful you are. I feel like after only 3 years, I can already see a glimpse of the man you will become, and I'm so proud of you for just being YOU.

A little bit about you at 3 years old: Some of your favorite things in the whole world right now are Curious George ("Ha Ha"), Bob the Builder ("Hey Hey"), reading books, and playing ball ("B-ball" as you put it). You also love to help with anything and everything ("ME DO!"). You play with play-dough for hours on end, and could eat Spaghettios until you turned into one giant meat-ball. Although, you've been slow to speak, it's clear that you understand everything around you...you even know your letters. You're fond of grabbing a magnet letter from the fridge, and bringing the M to Mommy while saying "mmmm" or 'dddd" for Dada...or pretty much any other letter! You're so smart! You have boundless energy. And I mean bound.less. You run and jump everywhere you go. I love to just watch you run and jump with that sparkling smile on your face.

I love you, little boy! I'm so thankful that God gave you to us .

Love, Mommy

I did my best to make a yummy and fun monkey cake:

I love to plop the kiddos down next to a window and snap some pictures of them on their birthday. Thomas wasn't so sure at first, but he warmed up to it:

"How old are you, Thomas?"
"Feeeee!"

Those little fingers just don't want to cooperate :-)

Thomas' pinata. I think the best part of my kids' birthday for them is going to the "party store" to pick out their pinata and balloons. It's become quite the tradition!

There was a certain football game on TV that everyone wanted to watch (read: if we didn't play it at the party, no one would have showed up but us!). But we're UI Vandals. There will be NO orange and blue at our house! We played the game, but flew our colors.

George!

He caught on quickly that it was his special day - decided to grab the opportunity to jump on the couch :-)

"Op now?" Not quite yet, buddy...

I think he knows he's loved.

No party for Thomas would be complete without playing some ball. Since it was his party, he got to kick every other turn :-)

My sweet little guy was good enough to take a break from his game to give his Mama some love.

One of my favorite things to do for the kids' birthdays is to put a bunch of pictures from their life on an SD card, pop it into the Wii, and have it run a slideshow with the images. Such a neat way to celebrate their life and to see how much they've grown!