Dinosaur Party!

We celebrated Jared's birthday with his first "class" party today at the Arizona Natural History Museum in Mesa (or the "Dinosaur Museum" as we call it. After 5 years of parties with friends and family at home, Jared REALLY wanted a birthday party somewhere else - and since his class this year only has ten kids, it seemed do-able. So ... today was the big day. :-)

The party started in the "Exploration Station" with pizza ...

... and juice boxes ...

... and more pizza.
Caleb has decided that he is now a very big boy and ready to sit with the big kids. :-)

Jared & Mikayla were very happy, as always, to be together!

We sang to the birthday boy ... (& someone's very happy one year old brother loved the birthday song!)

... and ate cupcakes.

... and shared hugs with sweet friends ...

... and ate more cupcakes.

... and took a family picture (check out Caleb reaching for that cupcake!)

After the mess Caleb made with the pizza, I wised up when it came to chocolate frosted cupcakes and strapped him down!

Little Cora tried on her own birthday hat (could she be any cuter??)

The museum had a planned craft for the kids to make dinosaur puppets (this was Jared's second favorite part of the day - he and Mikayla made puppets for each other)

... and afterwards we opened presents from very thoughtful friends (this was J's first favorite part)

Then the whole group was ready to head out to the Museum!

The kids ooh'd and aah'd over the dinosaur statues and waited for the FLASH FLOOD!

Will and Arianna took a picture that Arianna's daddy called, "Fossil Dating". Ha ha!

Finally - the flood!

The skeletons there are so massive and impressive!

... and this HUGE scorpion gave us all the creeps. Gross that it is part of Arizona's history!!

After seeing most of the museum, we all headed outside for some gold panning!

Which, as you can tell - is very serious business for the Daddies!

I think they all have watched an episode (or 100) of Alaskan Gold Rush! Ha ha!

I finally let Caleb out of the stroller in the area where they "dig" for bones in rubber mulch (away from the water). As soon as he made it out, though, he high tailed it for his brothers and the WATER. Within minutes he was pretty much soaked. Can't fool this kid!

What a fun day! Jared asked tonight if EVERY one of his birthdays can be at the Dinosaur Museum. He has such a sweet group of kids in his Kindergarten class at PVCP. We had a great time with them and their little sisters! Thanks so much to all our friends and neighbors and my sister who helped make it a special day for J!