Birthday Celebration, Parts 1-4

It's finally happened. Piper and Fletch have gone from toddlers to little kids--they turned 4 years old last weekend. I can't believe it. After their 4-year appointment, this Friday, I'll do a post on what they're up to. For now, here is a post about how we celebrated. I intended this to be a few separate posts so it wasn't so photo heavy, but I got lazy so now you just get one giant post.

Birthday Celebration Part 1:
The first part of the birthday celebration came when Mom and Danny came to visit. We started their trip with a voyage to the National Building Museum, which happens to also be where we spent P&F's 3rd birthday. Maybe it will become a tradition.

After a long morning of exploring the museum, we headed home where we had a mini-party at home with gifts from mom and brownies (of course) instead of cake.

Birthday Celebration Part 2:

The trip to the museum was on Saturday. On Sunday, we had their friends' birthday party at The Little Gym. It was so, so, so awesome. They made it really easy on us, so we could just sit back and enjoy watching Piper and Fletch play with all their friends. It was probably one of my favorite parenting moments yet--just watching them have fun without a care in the world.

Birthday Celebration Part 3:
So all of that stuff was the weekend before their actual birthday. On the Thursday before their birthday, I brought cupcakes to school so they could celebrate with their new classes. I loved seeing how they behave in class and interact with their teachers. So fun.

Birthday Celebration Part 4:

Finally, Saturday, August 30 arrived. I couldn't believe we had celebrated 4 years of keeping these children alive. We had a super fun day. We started out with a donut breakfast, and then headed to the National Aquarium in Baltimore.

We also went to the little park across the street from the aquarium and played for a bit.

This was so great, although we had a little incident that put a slight damper on things. On the elevator at the garage, Piper got a little too close to the door, and her elbow got sucked into the door jam. Lots of screaming and crying ensued as Eric and a couple of others dislodged her arm. It was scary and awful, and I sobbed crying when she was set free. Thankfully, within about an hour, she was fine--just a small bruise on her elbow.

After all that excitement, we came home and had their final birthday party. Eric's parents came over, and we had opened presents, had a cookout, and did cake and candles.

Overall, we couldn't have celebrated any better and been more happy to cross this 4th birthday milestone. It was a fantastic week with our fantastic kiddos.