Grayson turns 3!

My baby is 3 already?!  How can that be?!  It seems like just yesterday it was our first deployment with Grayson on the way.  Now it's 3 years later and we're going through deployment #2 and my baby has turned into a little boy before I knew it!  I had it all planned out back in Oct/Nov that I was going to make him a Jake in the Neverland Pirates cake.  He loved Jake at the time.  Of course as I started brainstorming cakes he saw the pictures on the computer and informed me that he did not want a Jake cake.  He wanted a Mickey cake.  And it couldn't be just ANY Mickey cake!  It had to have the clubhouse on it!  Thank goodness for Pinterest!  I got tons of ideas and had lots of time to brainstorm what I was going to do for this Mickey cake. :)  

For school I made some Mickey Oreo cookies for his class rather than cupcakes.  They turned out really cute, but of course I somehow managed to erase the one picture off my phone that showed what the cookies looked like from the front... oh well! :)

His birthday was on a Saturday so I was able to plan a small party for that day.  He got to open his birthday present that morning from Grandma and Grandpa Sand and was thrilled to find Grandma made him a Mickey blanket and pillow case!  He also got a new Mickey soap dispenser and cars.

 Thank goodness we live in GA and the weather in the winter is great!  It was about 70 degrees that day and sunny so we kept the kids outside.  Grayson and Ryley got to bring the teepee home from Ohio since their big cousins have outgrown it.  The kids had fun playing in that and on the swing set while hot dogs were on the grill and lunch was getting prepared. 

Will was able to call in on Skype so we ended up doing birthday cake first.  Unfortunately, the FOB Will was at that day did not have good Skype so we couldn't see or hear him talking.  However, he could see and hear everything that was going on so he just had to type what he wanted to say and I could read it off the screen. :)  He said I outdid myself on the birthday cake this time so he now expects a Notre Dame Stadium cake for his next birthday.  Too bad he's in Afghanistan still for his birthday.... but lucky for me so I don't have to worry about making him that cake! :)

Addison

Shelby

Jackson

Harley

Andrew

We were lucky enough to have Will's Aunt Jayne and Uncle Lou come up from Jekyll Island for the birthday party.  They were able to come last year for Grayson's 2nd birthday so it was nice to be able to have them there again and for Will to be able to see them on Skype.... even if they couldn't see him. :)

 After lunch is was time for presents.  Before I knew it, Grayson was tearing open the presents and I almost didn't have my camera before all the presents were opened! :)  

It was a wonderful day for a birthday party!  Thank you to all the friends and family that were able to be there to celebrate with us!!  We wish you all could have been there!