Carrie's 3rd Birthday

This weekend was Carrie's 3rd birthday extravaganza.  It started with Grandmama and Grandpa's arrival from Knoxville on Friday.  Saturday morning, Grandpa spent hours being entertained by the little birthday girl herself.  They played blocks, he got several meals cooked for him in her kitchen and he had the pleasure of spending about 2 hours with Carrie out in the hot son on her brand new swing set.  Meanwhile, Grandmama was busy cooking for the main event - Carrie's birthday party.

Carrie playing with Abby and Madeline on her new swingset - it cost a fortune and takes up our entire yard. Oh well - at least its less mowing for Paul!

We had a big time at her birthday party.  She got a ton of presents which have already made it all over our house and had fun playing with her friends Madeline and Abby.  The highlight was of course the cakes, however.  She was lucky enough to have two different kinds of cakes - a 'Bugs Life' cake and three 'Cars' cakes. G-Pops made the cars cakes.  She had the 'Mater' car all to herself.  

The proud grandparents

Carrie and her loot

The birthday girl

Bug's Life Cake (Mommy outsourced this one)

The 'Cars' cakes made by G-Pops (who knew he had such talent?)

Carrie with her Bug's Life Cake

Carrie and Madeline chowing down

We wrapped up the party by saying good-bye to Carrie's paci which she attached to a helium balloon and let fly away (or at least thats what she thinks happened...really the paci was too heavy for the balloon).  She was a bit sad to say good-bye to her paci (as were her 2 grandmothers).  Later that night as we were putting her to bed and she was complaining about the lack of paci's, she grabbed my face and said "Listen to me Mommy..there are paci's at Gigi and G-Pops house" as if we should get in our car to go get them.  Poor thing!  We will see how it goes (we have an emergency stash just in case....)

This morning as we woke up utterly exhausted and attempted to remove all the icing off of the carpets, we finally understood why people have birthday parties somewhere else. Chuck E. Cheese –here we come!

Oh and here's is a special 'thanks' to Aunt Amanda and Uncle Brett who sent several fun games to Carrie for her birthday and also called from Hawaii.  This morning Carrie asked me in the car if we could play 'The Candy' (i.e. Candyland) this afternoon!