In December, Nate turned the big zero six. I decided to throw him a surprise party (Okay, I stole the idea from my neighbor who threw her six-year-old a surprise party just a few days before). Nate already knew about his friend birthday party coming up but he didn’t know about the family party we had planned.

The night before, Rob and I stayed up and made this beauty out of his favorite candy, skittles.

The day of, Rob took Nate on a little photowalk to the park while family gathered. Here is what happened when he walked in the door.

http://api.smugmug.com/services/embed/1774139509_MVQXKxz?width=640&height=480

Then, a few days later, his friend party had been planned to take place. Nate had handed out the invitations to some kids at school without me ever getting a chance to meet the parents or anything. So I had no idea who these kids were and had no idea how to get a hold of the mothers.

Well, birthday party morning came and Nate was sick. Not just a little sick, but a lot sick. I had to call the moms I knew and cancel the party. Then I had to ask around to other moms to find out last names of the random kids Nate invited and looked online to find phone numbers. I actually got a hold of all the mothers! I was shocked, relieved, and yes, annoyed. Since the party was so close to Christmas, we had to move the party to the week following Christmas.

The day of the rescheduled party came and I tried to remind the moms of it but still only 1/2 the kids made it . Nate was quite bummed, but there wasn’t anything we could do about it.

Don’t tell Nate, but even besides the low attendance, this party didn’t exactly turn out to be a riot. Rob and I had all kinds of silly, messy games to play and most of the boys didn’t want anything to do with getting messy. They just sat there. Lame.

Nate also decided he wanted a red oreo cake. Okaaaay. So I did red frosting and the entire cake was covered in whole oreo cookies. Well, I’m not sure why, but none of the boys liked it and they made sure to tell me.

The other totally cool thing we did was set up the entire living room with hotwheels trick tracks. It was awesome!! Annnnd….none of the guests wanted to play with them. At all. They kept telling me they wanted to watch a movie. What is it with these kids?

Next year, Nate’s inviting just a couple friends and we’re going to Chuck-E-Cheese.

Regardless of how the party went, we sure love our growing kid. He makes us feel so much love every day.

(More videos of him opening presents are here).