The Adventures of Noah and Maya: Noah's 3rd Birthday: Celebration # 3 Part 1

Noah turned three on July 10 2012. On July 9th, he celebrated with his friends at school (see Celebration # 1 post ). On the big day, we went to the bird park (see Birthday Day Post ) and that evening we had a very small decorate-your-own-cupcakes shindig at home (see Celebration # 2 Post ).

Originally, his actual party (yes he is a bit spoiled with birthday parties...) was supposed to be on August 5 (Seth was away the end of July) but... unfortunately our little guy was still contagious with chickenpox then so we had to reschedule to .... September 16!

In preparation for his dinosaur birthday party, we sent out some e-invites (about 14 kids, 3 infants and 16 adults rsvped that they were coming...).

Rented out the "function room" in our condo, ordered some dino cupcakes (apatosaurus, stegosaurus, pterosaur and T-rex cupcakes) and rented a big climbing/slide set.

Noah helped me choose some dinosaur coloring pages for the "arts and craft table". He then colored in a few to decorate the room.

He did these entirely on his own - and excitedly explained that his dinos are multicolored...

Noah selected some dino facts to include in various fact-sheets about the dinosaurs featured on the cupcakes.

He also helped choose some pictures for the "Little dino over the years" poster and then decorated it with dino stamps...

Finally, he helped prepare the goodie bags. Unfortunately, we did not take any pictures of Noah assembling the various things for the goodie bags - each had to have a plastic dino toy, dino gummies, a dino egg (aka silly putty), big dino droppings (aka m&ms) and baby dino droppings (aka raisins). Noah had lots of fun organizing the piles and putting each thing in the various goodie bags.

On the day of, Noah and his friend Audrey decorated the tablecloths (roles and roles of cardboard colored drawing paper) with dino stickers and dino stamps. They very much enjoyed this activity at first but after the 4th table... became a bit less enthusiastic so the two Valeries (me and Audrey's mom) finished the decorations. And of course, we prepared some food....

Blew up many balloons and put up banners, dino stickers (see them on the windows?) and dino decorations.

I then hid 12 "dino eggs" (you will see them in later pics - just plastic Easter-like eggs with sort of a pre-historic pattern going with mentos in them) - some easy to find - a few very hard (for the older siblings and friends).

After most of the kids arrived, they did the dino egg hunt - all the kids had to put the eggs they found in a big basket and once they had all found the 12 eggs each kid would get one egg during cake time. Some were found very quickly - others took a little longer.

After all the eggs were found, many kids headed to the "arts and crafts table" to color the dino sheets. Below Lola, Luna and Bink...

and make little dino figures with fast-drying clay and put a little magnet in the back to put on the fridge. Ana (Audrey's big sister) was running the craft table. Below helping Matthias and Daniel with their projects.

Noah was very excited about the clay and spent a good time playing with it and making shapes and impressions (with keys, clips and various objects we had provided).