Oh A-Camping We Will Go!

No, we're not crazy enough to go camping during the winter up here, but we did do a little indoor camping for Jesse's birthday party.  I can't believe our little boy turned TWO years old yesterday!  I know I will say and think this every single year, but the time really does pass so quickly.  I'll hopefully get a 2-year update posted at some point over the next week, but for now I want to share some pictures of the party.

We had a small get-together yesterday morning with Jesse's closest buddies from our building.  The "main event" was a short sing-along around the "campfire" (video at the end of this post).  The rest of the time was spent hanging-out at the "campsite", eating s'mores, cake, and trail mix, and playing in the tent.

We turned Jesse's room into a "tent", which we realized the night before the party was more of an engineering feat than we were expecting.  It was already Jesse's bedtime when we did a trial run of the tent, but we soon realized that it wasn't going to stay up with packing tape or duct tape, so after trying a number of things to try to make the tape work, we figured out that we could rig it to the clothing rod in his closet.

Stars around the campfire...

The tent.  Jesse was sad to see it go.  He loves to build tents in his room, and this one is by far the coolest that James has built.

My friend Karlie made Jesse's cake and she did an absolutely amazing job!  It was delicious and looked incredible!  I just had to take some close-up shots to show all the detail.  It was definitely sad to have to take it apart when we cut it, but I'm glad I have the pictures to remember it.

Trail mix bar...

S'mores bar...

The kids had fun playing with duplos and cars in the tent.

And fun playing/socializing in the living room, too.

Our friends Andrea and Lilah.  This past week and even yesterday when we asked Jesse whose birthday it is, he kept telling me it was Lilah's (hers was several weeks ago).  I kept trying to tell him that no, it is HIS birthday.  I think maybe he finally gets it.

Abby, Nathan and Jamin.



As soon as Jesse's friends started showing up, he began saying at regular intervals "eat cake".  Well, we finally did eat cake and Jesse loved every last bite.

Here is a little footage of the beginning of the campfire sing-along.  We sang "Old MacDonald", "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and "Baby Beluga".   

And here is everyone singing to the Birthday Boy.  He seemed a little shy about everybody singing to him, but once that was over he made it clear he was ready to dig into the cake.