Happy Birthday Matthew!

Ahh yes, it's that time again. Time for the Matthew Birthday Extravaganza!

Not sure who did the chalk effort as shown below, but apparently someone needs to work on their spelling. A+ for effort and style though!

As always, Julie did an AMAZING job with the decorations. Thomas the Train is still the motif of choice, as we'll see more of later. Julie remarked that the red and blue streamers made our house look like a political convention.

I then suggested that we hang dartboards with faces of both candidates between the streamers. We soon realized that both faces would be fairly unrecognizable after about five minutes.

In the background, we see the pizza which was our dish du jour. The pizzas pictured were wheat crust from Papa John's (blech!) but thankfully Mommy ordered two more pan crust pizzas from Pizza Hut (yum!).

We had a slightly lower turnout this year, but with good reason. Julie's sister is in the hospital after having her gall bladder removed and my brothers are both away at school and my mom had the kids just last weekend so they abstained.

The usual cast of characters were all there :

Grandpa Rodney

Mr. Kolby Tutt - nice hair, dude.

We have had our challenges with Kolby in the past, but I have to say on this day, Kolby was an absolute angel. He played with the little kids and he behaved himself.

A little bit of horsing around :

And at long last it was time to open presents! Our presiding present opening champion was definitely up to the task. Ready Set GO!

Corvette Shirt :

Bears shirt ("Where are the TOYS?!?" Matthew says)

Thomas the Train helicopter :

By the way, the little girl at bottom left is Matthew's friend "Oh-lee-la" (Olivia to the rest of us) "Oh-lee-la" lives across the street and Matthew is rather smitten by her.

Thomas the Train bed set :

The "Best Present" award goes to the "Fly and Learn Globe" courtesy of the Tutts. This little item kept the kids going for hours. It's got a little joystick and you fly the plane around the world, exploring various historic sites like The Great Wall of China. Even I found it amusing until Matthew took it away from me.

Not pictured is the most devilish toy of the party, "Find It". If you've never tried this, save yourself your sanity and DON'T. :) For more, read this : http://jrock3x8.blogspot.com/2008/09/find-it.html

At last it was time for CAKE! And momma, as usual, outdid herself. But first things first.

A happy birthday boy next to his main squeeze.

and at last the insiprational wonder that is James :

Most impressive.

Happy Birthday to You!

Happy Birthday to You!

Happy Birthday Dear Matthew!

Happy Birthday to You!

Please don't call the RIAA on me for using that illegally.

Make A Wish!

Let's EAT!

Another one down. Next up : Halloween!