All Aboard!

The Saturday after Jack's birthday, we threw him a birthday party that was all things train. Last year, the weather was beautiful for his party in our backyard, but this year would fail us. Epically fail us. As in, it snowed the day before, and never got above 35 degrees.

Luckily, our awesome friends and family didn't fail us, and all came out to play in the park in the cold. Sadly though, the weather put another kink in the train party plans, as the city shut down the train because of the weather!

Nonetheless, a great time was had by all!

The invitation, from Etsy seller Sugarcoat Paperie:
I loved the invitation SO much, the baker took it as a cue and made Jack a Train Ticket cake!
I am also completely in love with our city park and it's special play areas for kiddos of a younger age. As you can see, our best friend Davis,
and our great pal Eli,
and our birthday boy all thoroughly enjoyed it without any regard for the bitter cold!
The parents, however, were not without regard for the cold, so we hurried the party right along, kicking it off right by singing Happy Birthday to the little man!

We wasted no time cutting cake...
and Jack helped to serve the pieces....

that we then had to eat with our fingers because Mom forgot the forks! What's better than eating birthday cake? Eating it with your hands! (A funny sidenote: our friends Jake and Davis took up residence in front of the M & M's bowl and barely moved for the rest of the party! Such funny boys.)
Then we jumped right into opening the HUGE pile of presents our friends brought. Unlike last year, Jack caught onto the paper ripping right away this year, and boy did he have fun with it!
He dove right into every package....
with full force,
and amazed expressions!
He was an eager opener,
tearing tissue paper from the bags
and delighting in his treasures!
He was a maniac with the tissue paper, and I wish we'd recorded it!
He was two handing the paper out of the bags and throwing it into the air,
in search of the prizes waiting at the bottom.
It was probably one of the most joyful experiences of my life watching him open those gifts. He was so eager and excited, so surprised and delighted with each new find. I imagine it was one of the most joyful experiences of his life, thus far!

And we're SO very thankful for our wonderful family and friends who came out in spite of the cold to celebrate with Jack, and for gifting him an enormous amount of gifts (it's unreal, really, the generosity) and just for being present for Jack. He was an exceptionally happy boy that day, and we were exceptionally happy parents.