Merrick's 4th Birthday

The highlight of this past week was that somehow my baby boy turned four.  I am really not sure how it happened, but all of a sudden I have a four-year-old.  His actual birthday was on Thursday and while we had his party planned for the weekend, we did manage to celebrate the day together as a family.  Jeremy's school schedule this semester is such that he is home on Thursdays until 4:30 so this gave us plenty of time to have some fun.

We started with lunch at one of Merrick's favorites, Panda Express.  I am not really sure why he loves it so much, but he does (I think it might be because it comes with a built in desert with the fortune cookies).  After lunch we took him to see the much anticipated "Planes" movie.  I knew we were going to have to take Carrigan and I was a little worried about how she would do so I intentionally picked the least busy theater in the area.  I also was banking on the fact that it was the middle of the day on the first week back to school.  It turns out all my calculations paid off as we were the ONLY people in the theater.  It was pretty awesome.  Merrick could talk during the movie, Carrigan could be as loud as she wanted, and we could try out six different seats until we found the best seat in the house (which we did).  After the movie we went home and opened a few presents before Daddy had to go to school and I had arranged for cousins to come over and play.

I think all in all Merrick had a pretty spectacular birthday, but the fun was just beginning.  Saturday we had Merrick's party at the park around the corner.  We had a "Planes" theme and I made a matching banner and cupcakes.  We had a paper plane flying contest, played in the splash pad, and on the playground and once again we were the only ones there for the majority of the time.  The party almost crashed and burned when we first got there and the splash pad was not working, but we improvised with our big sprinkler from home until someone from the city made it out to fix the splash pad.  I think overall it was a success and let me tell you Merrick made out like a bandit with all his gifts and our house now looks like it was thrown up on by a toys store.

Last year I kind of dropped the ball on giving Merrick much of a birthday celebration so hopefully he feels like I made up for it this year.  I just hope that he felt as loved as he is.  He has been such a joy to our family over the last four years and I can't wait for all the years ahead.