Mark's Third Birthday Party

I just discovered that the iMovie app on my phone works pretty well for making little videos!

So since I am not the greatest at blogging right now, I am going to post a few videos of trips and other activities to make up for not writing. :)

Here is Mark's Third Birthday Party - Train themed, of course.

Sharkface's Second Birthday Party

Also known as the party that I spent entirely too much time on Pinterest.

Starfish and Sand Dollars

Dinglehoppers

Rolled Utensils with Lifesavers

In case you haven't figured it out, it was a fish/shark/under the sea themed party.

Initially it was supposed to be a Finding Nemo themed party, but when I asked Steve to make the cake, I told him Fish/Shark/Nemo and let him go with it. After all, leave the cake making to the expert. I think that I mentioned before that Steve was a semi-finalist on the Holiday Baking Championship, right?

Shark Cake

Needless to say, I was thrilled with his creation!

Snack, Plate & Utensil Table 

For my kid-level table, I had plates and utensils down low to reach, as well as cheese (Shark Teeth), grapes (Seaweed), puff'n corn (Coral), pretzel sticks (Driftwood), and goldfish served in a fish bowl with a fish dipping net.

Coral is delicious

The kids seemed to really dig this table. At the end of the party, they grabbed the bucket of "Coral" and Mark kept dumping net-fulls of goldfish onto the table, plate, and floor.

Cheese Face

It's my party and I'll make a mess if I want to

Other winners of the day were the bouncy house, which I got for free through Jay's fire department buddies. Those things are worth their weight in gold for keeping the kids occupied. Parents could actually hang out and enjoy some cocktails. Speaking of which, our signature cocktail was a Shark Bite, which was basically a Moscow Mule made with Blueberry Vodka and garnished with blueberries.

I'm surprised he sat still long enough for this

The other hit was our impromptu photographer, as well as a super fun shark cutout that I ordered from Oriental Trading Company. Laura graciously grabbed my camera and started shooting without prompting... now I have amazing photos for my blog as well as some to share with the attendees. So THANK YOU, Laura!

We look a little too pleased to be eaten... be sure to check out Angela's Blog!

Slow Swimmers and Octopus Dip

Peanut Butter & Jellyfish Sandwiches and Sea Shell Salad

Submarine Sandwiches

The food items that didn't quite make it to the table:

Land Caviar - Devil Eggs
Sea Snails - Pigs in a Blanket

The Octopus Dip was supposed to have an octopus made out of a pepper sitting in the middle of the dip, but I ran out of time for that. I also was planning to carve a watermelon shark. It took me weeks to prepare for the party between making the food tags, ordering decorations and goodie bags. I completely forgot to take pictures of those, but they were these adorable fish bags that I got from Oriental Trading. I filled them with Nemo Stickers, bouncy balls, snacks, bubbles, and also candy shark tooth necklaces.

The day before the party was incredibly frustrating for me, as I had a lot of interruptions that ended up with Mark not napping and everything taking five times as long without my usual 2-3 hour window to get stuff done.

It took me four hours to ice these sugar cookies

Sand Dollar Almond Cookies were my own concoction

I have to say that I was pretty pleased with how my sand dollar cookies came out. I started off by using this recipe from Odense, but then I realized that I had more almond paste than they called for. So I added more butter and more flour. They turned out pretty tasty! I'm going to work on tweaking the recipe and will post it soon. The reason I decided to use almond paste is because I ordered a bunch of it when I made my own rainbow cookies and the paste expires in October.

Speaking of cookies, back to dessert!

Cake this awesome needs lots of pictures

Markface did his best to sing along

Markface clapping for his birthday song

Steve gave me a lengthy tutorial about how to dissect the shark - Mark looks concerned

Oh, maybe that was the dowel rod that Steve was talking about

The aftermath 

I let Steve have free rein over the design and type of cake. It was a vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream. I love that he dyed it red... the inside looked just like sashimi, which was a bit disturbing but also entertaining!

I almost forgot our drinks - sea water (water with cucumbers and mint, still attached to their stems to look like seaweed), and squid ink (iced tea). For the grown-ups, we also had a variety of beer, including Landshark - which I hadn't even thought about until the party was nearly over.

A few folks hung around after the party wound down, like our friends Jen and Tim. Since we're now officially part of the friends with kids crowd, we have to get our fun in whenever and wherever we can. I love spending time with my kid, but it's nice when I get the best of both worlds. I feel like I'm away from him plenty with working full time, plus all of the weddings (6 this year!) and other social engagements we have. It's nice to be able to enjoy some combined adult and kid time, especially when everyone is having a good time.

I hope that you enjoyed Markface's 2nd birthday highlights. If you need more ideas or want to see more pictures, there are hundreds on the Shutterfly site.

Back to Blogging

I swear it's going to happen this time.

I never posted about our five year anniversary reunion in Key West. It was a bit of a bust, although parts of it were fun. The best part for me was the diving, even though the visibility wasn't great. We saw two dolphins and two rather large reef sharks at Looe Key. I'm looking forward to getting back in the water this year. We'll probably check out Lake Phoenix this summer to brush up on our skills. I would love to do a trip out with our dive shop to the Outer Banks this year, but we'll see how that goes. I don't know if I'll be comfortable enough to go to the depths that most wreck diving involve. Not to mention my dive buddy's excessive air consumption! But maybe a few weekends of diving at Lake Phoenix will cure some of our problems.

Here are the last few months in photos...

Markface eating rocks at the Waterfowl Festival

Our annual post-Thanksgiving walk to the persimmon tree (aka the permission tree)

Markface showing off his latest moves

We had a sweet van for our group from Miami to Key West

Ryan and Jay pushing Markface's stroller... this trip we stayed pretty far north, in the quiet White Street district. I liked being a bit of a haul from Duval Street, it made for some impressive Fitbit stats!

Markface being adorable at the Conch Republic Seafood Company

Markface trying to feed me something

Shark wrangler

This will forever be known as the Tomato Soup incident. It was one of the low-lights of our trip.

Markface passed out on Duval after the boat parade

Jay and Brian attempting to wash off a sandy Mark at Bahia Honda State Park

The flight home was much better than our flight down

Setting up our tree. Mark was trying to put a cracker into the tree

Feeding the chickens... Mark calls them cluck-clucks

One of his newest tricks - getting on top of the table

Jay took Mark on an impromptu trip to New York to see friends and family... this is in Long Beach

And we got a bit of snow a few weeks back. Mark was a big fan and probably would have stayed out all day if he hadn't gotten cold.

We are off to Phoenix tomorrow to visit Colleen (yay) and for some R&R. 

Plans:

Survive a 7 hour flight with an active toddler.

Visit the Grand Canyon.

Attend the Ren Faire.

Attend some Beer Week festivities.

Eat at Sassy's Cafe and visit Melody from Holiday Baking Championship.

Since I followed Steve so closely during the Holiday Baking Championship, I feel like I personally know everyone that was on the show. I figured that while we're in AZ, we definitely needed to check out Melody's place. The funny thing is that Steve and Rob will actually be arriving in Phoenix the same weekend that we are leaving. Sounds like there may be a bit of a HBC reunion going on out there. I'm sorry to miss the fun!

Wordless Wednesdays