Happy Birthday to Ben and Nate!

It's that time of year again in our house: March, otherwise known as "birthday month" around here.  Both Ben and Nate celebrate their birthdays this month and we start hearing about how they celebrate their birthdays in March several months earlier :). So, the inevitable "no-day-all-year-is-better-than-this" event starts gaining excitment soon after Christmastime from two certain little boys. 

This year, our theme for the boys' birthday went without question: DINOSAURS!  They both just love these prehistoric beasts and I guarantee that they can beat anyone in a Name That Dinosaur contest.  It may not be quite as humbling as challenging them to a game of identifying road construction trucks by brand and official name, but it comes close.  Especially when these huge words roll so easily off of their little tongues.  Veloci-what?  Yes, they know.  What-osaurus?  They'll correct you.  So with that, the theme for our party was formed and I just had to work my magic and come up with some fun invitations.  Voila! Here's what we ended up with:

Tyrann-o-saur Ben is turning 5!

Nate-o-saurus is turning 3!

Hope you can come to our DINO-MITE party.

Join us Saturday, March 19th

If you don't it's a crime.

'Cause we're going back to the Land Before Time.

The party's at our house.  It starts at 3:30

We'll be digging for dinos and you may get a bit dirty.

Erupting volcanoes, cake, fossils and more.

Please call us today and respond with a ROAR!

So, yeah, we had some fun activities to live up to now that they were in print hanging on people's fridges.  This wasn't going to be a neat party, that's for sure, but the prospect of bringing the dinosaur hunt inside sounded like so much fun to us.  The house can always be cleaned, right?  Just as long as the kids all have FUN!

My parents, Uncle Mike and Aunt Chang and 4 families we are good friends with joined us for the day and it was the perfect number of guests.  There were 12 children, 3 of them being babies around Abby's age.  All of the kids were able to particpate in some of the activities and they all seemed to have a great time with everything. 

You are now entering the Land Before Time...

The boys wanted to set up their library of dinosaur books in case anyone wanted to look through them.  They love reading their dino books before bed at night and have quite the library!  They did make good props even if everyone was too busy to browse through them.

Look!  A pteranodon left an egg for each of the kids to bring home.  A papier mache egg, that is, stuffed with party favors from behind...

Of course the boys each needed their own birthday cake.  Nate wanted the green stegosaurus and Ben wanted the orange triceratops.

I built a real volcano for the centerpiece and here it is stuffed with the faux smoke.  Later on, we'll remove that for some entertainment.  To be continued....

We played Pin the Pteranodon in the Air, which unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of since I was running the game.  The main excitement was in the three activity stations we set up for the kids to try their hand at being archeologists.  This is where the party gets really messy....

Each child got a bag in which to collect his/her findings.  And out to the digging fields we go....

First comes the Dino Dig.  Here, the kids got to dig through sand to find fossils, shells, coins, dinosaurs and bones.  Ask me about making homemade fossils.  I'm an expert now :).

Next the little archeologists got to make some fossils of their own to bake and bring home.  With the help of Play-Doh molds and some plastic dino friends, we had lots of different fossils made by our little experts.

Finally, our paleantologists could go to the Chip Away to break away pieces of the block and reveal hidden treasures.  Yeah, this proved to be a lot more difficult that it appears so luckily we had several dads on hand to intervene.  To be continued as well....

Annnnddd....they're off to dig and chip away for treasures and to make fossils....

That's my girl....Abby was totally turned off by all of the gritty sand and dirt.  She'd much prefer playing dolls or dress up like her mom :).  What is this stuff, Mom??

Real men use real tools to reveal hidden plastic dinosaurs :).  Yes, crowbars, mallets and screwdrivers eventually did the trick and the kids had fun chiseling away the plaster once the block had been warmed up....

Look at this guy, always the little heart throb!  He stayed in the Dino Dig the entire party and even opted to skip out on opening his gifts so that he could go back and play in the sand.  I think he was excited at the prospect of Mom letting him play with sand in the house, if you ask me :).

The continuation....we took out the faux smoke and set off a real erupting volcano for the kids before we ate dinner.  They loved it!  Ben told us that it was his favorite part of the party!

Dinner is served.  I separated the "Herbivore" dishes from the "Carnivore" dishes so that the plant eaters could migrate to one side of the table and the meat eaters on the other :).  Our menu consisted of:

Dino Nuggets

Brontosaurus PB&J sandwiches

Dino Dig Jello cups

Pteranodon Hot Wings

T-Rex Nest Candies

Velociraptor hardboiled eggs

Lava Punch

(and some boring sandwiches and Caesar salad for the adults) :)

The gang!

Everyone loved digging the plastic dinosaur out of their cup of Jello, even Abby!  It was seriously the most exciting feat of anyone at the party when they finally revealed their prehistoric friend from the depths of their orange Jello.  Nate was the first to do this; ironically, the one who usually doesn't like Jello.  He ate it to his heart's content with the goal of digging out that dinosaur.  I should bury toys in his meals more often. Hmmm.....

The Savignano gals :)

Cake time!  I think the boys are enjoying themselves, don't you think?

How old are you, Nate?

THREE!!!

I'm FIVE!!!!

In case you forgot already, I'm THREE!!!  Nate asked me the next day if he was still three :)

Finally, that night after everyone left and all of the fossils and dirt had been washed away in the bath, the boys opened some of their family gifts.  Of course Miss Abby got a gift from Pop and Nana, too.  Wouldn't want to leave out the princess when it's not even her birthday, right? :)

Dresses!  I LOVE dresses much more than sand, Nana! :)

Happy 5th birthday to Benjamin and Happy 3rd birthday to Nate!  We love both of you dearly and are so blessed to have you as our two sons.  You make every day worth living!  XOXO

Love, Mommy and Daddy :)

Yearly Pediatrician Check-Ups

Wow, it feels like I haven't entered a pediatrician update for the boys in ages!  I guess that is what happens when they are on the yearly schedule instead of going more frequently like they did when they were younger.  At 5 and 3 years old, both of the boys keep us on our toes with their energy and curiosity.  The "why" question is mentioned at least once every 3 minutes during the day :) and both of their imaginations are growing in leaps and bounds.  Both of the boys are growing so much and have their similarities and their differences.  Sometimes it's humorous how similar they can be and then the next minute you wonder how they can be the same gender, from the same family and be so different.  It has been interesting to watch their little personalities bloom over this past year and the next year will have even more changes so I'm sure we will see even more strides.  Benjamin has been registered to start kindergarten in September at Franconia Elementary School and Nate has been registered for his first year of pre-K at Indian Valley Nursery School.  Wow, are they growing!

Below are the statistics from both of their recent trips to the pediatrician:

Benjamin:
weight - 39.5lbs (50th)
height - 43 inches (75th)
vision - 20/20

Nate:
weight - 32lbs. (50th)
height - 38 inches (53%)
vision - 20/30 (approximately, he was getting silly at the end of the exam!)

The doctor discovered a very slight heart murmur on Nate so we are going back in a few weeks to further assess it.  She did not give reason for concern and told us that sometimes this will be the case if the child has been sick a few times recently, which Nate was this winter.  So we will see what happens when we go back for our re-evaluation in April.

Benjmain's speech concerns seem to have dissipated with all of the progress that he has made this past year and a half.  He will be evaluated by the Souderton Area School District in a few weeks to assess if he will need to have speech lessons during school next year.  We have faith that whatever direction he needs to go for next year will be the right one for his ultimate development.  He has made a lot of progress with his current speech therapist whom he sees weekly, but if he needs additional help next year then we will embrace that. 

We will keep you posted on both of the boys and their follow-up evaluations.  Never a dull moment around here for certain! :)

Tutu

At just shy of 17 months old, Abby has already developed a sense of all things frilly and girly.  She is instantly attracted to tulle, frill and lace and just loves wearing "pretties" in her hair.  The other morning, I had her closet door open to get her dressed and as I was holding her, she started rummaging through her clothes to find a suitable outfit.  Enter the fluffy, pale pink tulle tutu.  It was like love at first sight :).  Of course we had to put it on and she had so much fun all day twirling around and watching it flare out as she sat down .  Here is our future ballerina in the making :)