THREE years old!

Caleb officially turned 3 on Saturday. Wow. It's impossible to believe that he's actually three years old. When he was born, I worked with 3 year olds. I thought it would be forever before he was that big. Forever came awfully fast. We've celebrated all weekend...

I was in a professional development training in Springdale on Thursday and Friday. Thursday afternoon, I left as soon as I could and went to Hobby Lobby to get the last of the party supplies. Then I headed to WalMart to get a snack for Caleb to take to school on Friday as well as a few other things...like a birthday present from Rudy and me. When I got home, Caleb had a couple of birthday cards waiting for him. One was from Pepapa and Anna Joyce and had a savings bond in it and the other one was from Memmie and Poppie and had a check in it! Wow! We called both sets of grandparents and thanked them for being so generous.

On Friday, we took Caleb's snack to school to share with his friends. It absolutely killed me to not be there for his "party" so I sent my camera (no, not my new one) to his teacher and asked her to take some pictures. She was very sweet to do so. When I picked Caleb up from school, he was rip-roarin' ready to go. He was so excited about his birthday party at school. I think we could've stopped there and he would've been fine. But, no - we had lots more partying to do! When we got home, we noticed that our new neighbors were moving in across the street. We decided that we would take some of Caleb's leftover rice krispie treat surprise over to them. It was pouring down rain, so Caleb took his umbrella and I put on my raincoat and we splashed all the way there. When we got home, we were so wet that we had to take off our pants in the garage before coming in the house. We both thought it was fun to play in the rain! Rudy got home just as we were getting ourselves re-dressed. We all hopped in the car and went to get the info on unlocking the clubhouse for the party on Saturday before going out for our 4th annual May 1st BBQ dinner. This is a tradition that started the night before Caleb was born. Rudy and I had dinner at Bandana's BBQ in St. Louis. Now, we always have BBQ for dinner on May 1st! After dinner, we came home and opened a package that had come for Caleb. It was a Hungry Hungry Hippo game from the Brixeys. He loved it! We've played HHH now about 1000 times. We just have to get Caleb to stop cheating...he likes to "feed" the hippos with his fingers. :) Before bed, Caleb got to take the last ball off of his countdown ribbon in his room. He was super-excited about that!

Saturday morning, Rudy got up with Caleb and let me sleep for just a little while before I got up and hit the ground running. Caleb came in to the bedroom and I said, "Happy birthday, Caleb!" He said, "Happy birthday, too, Mama." He never did quite figure out what to say when people said that to him. It was confusing all day long! He also never did quite figure out that he was three. He still says "2" when you ask him how old he is. We're working on it.

When I got up on Saturday, Rudy and I straightened up the house before I got a shower and headed out to pick up cake and balloons. While I was gone, Rudy got Caleb down for a nap. Shortly after I got back, Mom and Aunt Harolyn showed up at the house. It wasn't long after that that Jimmy, Kim and Kim's nephew, Alex, got there. I woke Caleb up from his nap to get ready for his party. He was a little shy with all of those people in his house, but he certainly warmed up when he got to open his present from Jimmy and Kim. He got a couple of water guns, a frisbee and some pool toys! I don't know about Caleb, but I'm certainly ready for it to get warm enough to use them. Just as Jimmy, Kim and Alex were getting ready to leave, Jan got to our house. Shortly after that, we all left to go up to the clubhouse to get ready for the big event!

The birthday party was a great success! We had 6 kids and 11 adults. The party was supposed to be outside on the playground, but it rained like crazy all day long and it was cold! We moved the party indoors and I (having seen the forecast) had planned some activities for the kids. First, I assigned all of them a color. They had to find all 3 of the cutout number 3's of their color that were hidden around the room to get their goody bags. There were crayons, bubbles, echo mics, prism viewers and stickers in each bag. After they all got their bags, we played "pass the present." It's sort of like a cakewalk, but the kids were sitting down and passing a present around the circle. When the music stopped, the person holding the present got to open it. I had gotten a small gift for each child and marked the bags so that we would know where to stop the music. I got space food (freeze-dried ice cream) for Aurick and Jackson, a wooden cutout princess with markers for Alivia, a princess mirror for Grace, a ball and glove set for Kaleb and a Lightning McQueen tin box for Caleb. Everyone loved their surprises and I thought it was a fun party game. After the games, we had cake. Caleb was shy about everyone singing to him, but he loved blowing out the candles! After the cake, Caleb opened his presents. He made quite a haul:

• an air launched rocket and a big playground ball from Jackson and Grace Lyons
• a story reader from Aurick and Alivia Schmidt
• a remote control tractor from Kaleb Tucker
• a kickboard, a T-ball set and the game Elefun from Grandma and Nana
• some summer PJ's, a Memory game and the Bee Movie from LaLa and Pops

Just when he thought he had opened all of the presents, we had one more. Mom and Mr. L. got him a Lightning McQueen bike with training wheels! He was so excited and wanted to get on it right away! Fortunately, the rain stopped for a little while, so the kids went out on the playground for a while and Rudy took Caleb out to practice riding his bike. After a while, we cleaned everything up and headed for home. When we got home, Caleb opened his present from Rudy and me. We got him the V.Smile V-Motion game system and a couple of games for it. The games are all educational and at his level so he doesn't get frustrated like he does when we play with the Wii. He also got to open his present from Jimmy, Becca and Maddox. It was a race track with loops and even had a car with it. After he played with that for a while, we all went to dinner at Carrabba's. The waiter was really nice and brought a surprise mini-dessert for Caleb and he got to blow out another candle...twice. He was so excited. We came home to play for a little while and then Caleb crashed in the bed after a little coaxing. He was so wired from his big day!

This morning, Mom and Aunt Harolyn left to go home. Rudy and I spent the day barely tolerating the antics of a now-3-year-old who had too much excitement over the weekend and was a combination of tired, excited and out of routine. We decided that if 3 doesn't get better, we want to go back to 2. So far, 3 has been one tantrum after another. Fortunately, Caleb did take a nap and we managed to get a lot done around here. We packed up some of the toys that he seldom plays with anymore. I was a little emotional as I put the Little People and their house, barn, school bus and airplane into boxes. Rudy put all of that stuff up in the attic, along with a few other toys and we replaced them with all of the stuff that Caleb got for his birthday. He hasn't missed them yet! I spent the rest of the afternoon/evening writing thank you notes, paying bills and uploading pictures. Now, we're getting ready for another busy week at school. But...we only have 4 more before summer break! What will summer bring with a three-year-old?