Bir-other's Day

My own special name for the day- we celebrated Eli's third birthday with our parents on Mother's Day. My Mom and Dad were passing through town on their way home and had some things to drop off, and the weekend worked better for Tim's Mom and Dad, also.

Tim was singing at both services at church, so he was up and gone at the crack of dawn. Eli and I got up at a more leisurely pace, got ready for church and I made sure everything was ready for the celebrations to come later that day.

We had a terrible morning. Sad, but true. Elisha was just a little stinker all morning- he woke up whining and demanding- which, unfortunately, seems to have become his usual wake up routine over the last few weeks! It escalated so much at church (they stepped out and told me he was spitting on the floor, throwing the toys and not listening to anyone) that I took him from the nursery just after the singing was done (when I was going to go sit next to Tim and enjoy the Mother's Day service :0{)

My MIL laughingly welcomed me to the terrible threes. I immediately rebuked her and said, I'll accept it as the last two weeks of 2- but I wasn't letting anyone claim this behavior for Eli for a whole year..... tremble at the thought!

We ended up having a wonderful day, even with such a rough start. My parents were a few hours late getting here, but we had a lovely meal with Tim's parents. Tim's mom had a few gifts for Eli to open while we were all sitting there, and then were able to visit a little bit with my parents once they arrived.

We got out his cake:

Yes, it is a school bus- he has been loving the school bus stories we've been telling every night. He got so excited when we sang happy birthday to him (and he sang with us :0)) that he couldn't get the candles all blown out. He had us all laughing so hard with him as he sat there trying to blow between chuckles.

Mom and Dad brought a few gifts from Rick and Tara to Eli. Boy did he like those!! It is soooo very hard to get video from our camera to this blog. I will try to attach some here.

Then we gave him our big gift- a back hoe loader bike. Ohhh- the excitement was palpable!! Tim and I had put the bike together during Eli's nap, and I covered it with a big blanket. He still says, "This the blanket that covered the back hoe loader, right Mama?"

We dragged a very reluctant, very sleepy toddler off the back hoe way after his bed time with promises that he could ride it again in the morning. He soooo didn't want to go to sleep! But, soon, the exhaustion won out and he journeyed to dreamland- no doubt driving a real back hoe loader.

Everyone was up and ready to go the next morning quite early. I went up to check on Eli, and found him laying in his crib, staring at the ceiling. When I opened the door and said hi, he jumped up and said, "Now I can play on my backhoe loader?????" Wonder how long he'd lain there..... :0)