Ben turns four!

Because of budget cuts, my library system is closed on Mondays in 2011.  Thankfully, full-time staff still get 40 hours, but that means we have to work a lot of weekend days.  We decided to take a trip during my only full weekend off in January, so that meant we had no weekend days to have a daytime "kid" party for Ben's birthday.  So we settled for a dinnertime party.  Thank goodness Grammy Pat came to help.  Just like last year, Ben pretty much got ignored while we prepared for his party.  :-( 
For kids activities, I blew up tons of balloons and put them in Ben's room.  Although I thought I had hundreds, it was only two layers of balloons, but the kids had fun.  Ben said he loved the balloons and he was having fun.  I also tried a treasure hunt for party favor bags.  That was one of my favorite party activities when I was a kid - my mother made an awesome set of clues for each kid to lead them from place to place to find a treasure at the end.  I wasn't sure it would work very well for 4-year-olds, but I really wanted to try.  I used the same set of 5 very simple clues in different order for each kid and had the parents help with reading them.  I think it worked ok - the parents liked it and everyone found their party favor bag.

Tim spent the day making another spectacular birthday cake, this time it was a monster truck.  Ben was super proud of it.  This time when we asked him if he had fun, he said yes.  So I hope he had a nice birthday.