3 Years of JOY!

It is almost impossible for me to admit that Ty is THREE years old already!  I feel like I am still on my birth high from having him.  He has been such an incredible joy to have in our family, and has truly brought out the best in all of us.  I love seeing the girls take care of him.  It has brought out so much love in them.  

For the big day, we gave Ty a toddler bed.  He doesn't look very excited in the picture (but I had to upload the one with all his Angry birds in bed with him!), but he seems to really love his new bed.  He is sleeping better than he has for a long time!  Hopefully this trends continues.  

The girls hid his presents, and he just parked his little bum wherever he found a gift and opened it right there.  He was SO fun to watch open presents!  He couldn't have been more excited!

Our plan was to spend the afternoon bowling, but the wait was too long.  So we played at the arcade instead.  Worked out great because our first game didn't work, and we got a free bag of tokens.  :)

Then came dinner at Red Robin.  Ty liked everyone singing to him!

The next day we had an Angry Bird Party with the family.  As you can see, he was pretty thrilled to get this shirt!  

I am still glowing from how awesome the cake turned out!  (I've included a small tutorial at the bottom of this post if you're curious.)

We love you so much, Ty Guy!  

I used a special cake pan to make this rounded cake.  Any cake with white frosting will do.  I did pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting.  A little out of season, but oh so yummy.

First I used a toothpick to trace where I wanted to draw the eyes.  Once I was happy, I drew over it with black frosting.

We considered trying something 3 dimensional for the beak, but couldn't think of anything.  So since Todd is craftier than I am, I had him do the beak!  This is what he came up with.  Looks awesome!

We made the feathers out of melted chocolate chips.  I drew the shape I wanted on wax paper, then filled it in with the melted chocolate out of a small ziploc bag with the corner clipped.   I put the feathers in right before we sang so they wouldn't melt.

So cute, so fun, so worth it!