Eli's Birthday Party

We celebrated Eli's third birthday last Saturday! We had a Thomas and Friends theme party which is Eli's favorite right now. Eli was really excited this year about having a birthday party. I have always loved planning his parties, but it was even more rewarding seeing his excitement and anticipation this time around. I made him some "train tickets" to pass out to all the kids here. He was really excited to walk door to door with his daddy and invite people to his party. :)

I printed out some favorite pictures of Eli before we left for Africa and used them to make this train.

Eli watched me draw and color this Thomas on some poster board and he really loved watching it come to life. When I was done he said, "Mommy you made me a good Thomas for my birthday party." :)

I made my first attempt at a yellow cake from scratch on Eli's actual birthday and then made the real thing a few days later. It was a little time consuming but the end product tasted nice and Eli thought it looked pretty cool. I have decided that a stand mixer and reliable power would be very helpful for any future cake baking that I do. :)  I brought a few tubes of colored icing from home and was able to fix this up into a real Thomas cake for a pretty special little boy.

Eli became quite shy once we all started singing "Happy birthday." The thumb of course went straight into his mouth. We might attempt to break that habit in the near future. :)

The birthday boy patiently waited for his piece of cake.

Marc tried to organize a water balloon toss since we have so many older children here on the compound. Eli thought this was pretty fun as well.

Gracie was very worried someone was going to pop her water balloon.

Hailey mostly just watched all the other kids. She turned 18 months old last week!

Time to open some presents!

Eli had a REALLY great time. We feel so blessed to have such a sweet, smart, energetic, and loving little boy. Thanks to everyone here and back home who helped us celebrate! I told Eli the other day that he will now be three for a very long time (just so he wasn't expecting to have a party every weekend). Now if you ask him how old he is he says, "I'm three, and I'm going to be three for a veeerrrry long time." Ha! Love him to pieces.