Day 1 of Our Staycation. Nathan's 5th Birthday Party!

Today we celebrated Nathan’s 5th Birthday with my family at our home.

Here I am with my two babies… Nathan will always still be my little baby, even though he is 5 years old now! It is so hard to believe how quickly he has grown up, it makes me happy yet sad because time goes by so fast sometimes. Here we are all together, by my rose garden.

Nathan is into trains now, not Thomas but trains that look real such as steam engines and diesels. Jeff and Tracy decided they would bring a steam engine cake for the party, so that sort of set the theme and colors.

Since Nathan loved his HO scale train layout so much from Christmas, I decided to do another layout for his birthday but with the smaller N scale trains. My Mom grew up on a farm, so I decided to make a farm similar to my Grandfathers farm shown in this aerial photo.

Here is what it looked like upon completion. It was a lot of work, but not as much work as the HO scale layout, because everything is SO much smaller. I did small hills with newspaper, then heated the grass paper so it molded to the hills. This layout is small, so we can keep it upstairs, too, which Nathan loves… his larger HO layout has to stay downstairs because it is so big.

Here is the farm house, barn and some fields.

Here are some more pictures of the layout. I forgot to take a picture of the pond, but I have a pond with some little people fishing around it, and even a cow taking a bath in it.

Here is the electric train I got Nathan from Hobby Lobby, he was so excited about having a two diesel train!

We had a lot of good food at the party, and to our surprise it was SUNNY all day long! We had an 80% prediction of all day rain! What a shocker! We had a veggie plate, my famous strawberry poppy seed spinach salad, delicious steaks from Annie Gunns Smokehouse market with mushrooms with a port wine sauce (hot dogs for the kiddos!), cheesy potatoes, fruit salad and a train cake from Whipt Cream. Jeff and Tracy brought a red wine and I made a foamy sherbert sprite drink.

Birthday boy downing a hot dog!

After lunch, we opened some gifts… lots of trains.

Every 5 year old needs an ant farm!

And a Sponge Bob fishing pole and… ewww! WORMS!

Autumn got a baby princess doll. Awh!

I have had a Wii and Wii Fit since Autumn has been born, and for the longest time I haven’t had it set up. I finally got it set up and got Nathan the Mario Go Kart game as a birthday gift. He LOVES IT! I heard you can rent games at the library, so I may try that to give him a variety of games.

Then, the cake! Whipt Cream does such a tremendous job on their cakes! Nathan was so excited about his steam engine cake, it is so colorful and I love the birthday banner on the front.

Here is that birthday boy blowing out his candles. The cake was SO yummy, it was a banana chocolate cake- although Nathan seemed to love the blue fondant the most!

We took the train off the cake so it can harden, and we will keep it. I still have the baby Autumn from her 1st birthday party that was on top of her cake in my curio cabinet.

After cake, there was the pinata… yes, we were a busy bunch! This is one of those pinata’s where you pull the ribbons one at a time, and one of them opens the secret trap door.

So cute and innocent. Don’t let that fool you, because… one minute she is sweet and happy go’lucky Autumn… and…

the next minute… She’s terrible two’s Autumn! Actually, she was ready for a nap. ;o)- Actually, we had a few of these episodes in the morning when I tried to remind her that all the wrapped presents were Nathan’s. She unwrapped a couple of gifts as soon as she knew Momma was in the other room! SHE IS SNEAKY!!! And, quick!

But, really, back to the sweet Autumn. Here she is with the ribbons.

Here are the kids, taking turns with pulling out the ribbons. The third ribbon opened the trap door! It did not take long AT ALL!

The kids picking up their goods. I had a lot of fun getting the pinata mix, because they sell candy 15/$1.00 at Party City, and they have a ton of cute pinata sized toys you can get too.

Finally, for favors I got these cute bins at the $1.00 store, and filled them with some inexpensive favors. I got Nathan a clear train piggy bank, Autumn a pink bandana, then they both got foam train stickers, a wooden train whistle, and bubble train whistle. Oh, and a box of train Animal Crackers.