Tyler's 7th Birthday Parties!

(That's right, plural)

Tyler's birthday was on September 25th and we celebrated his birth with two parties, one with friends and one with family.

The theme for the friend party was batman; we had a batman cake, batman game, and batman pinata. After that party ended we started preparing for the family party that started a few hours later.

Here is the cake I made..

The batman game. I spent every evening for an entire week cutting out these bat wings for the game. We taped 3 on every back and then the children ran around grabbing them off each other. The child with the most wings won.

The Balloon game. Every child had a balloon tied to their ankle then ran around trying to pop each others balloons while trying to protect their own. The child with the only un-popped balloon won.

Hulla-hoop contest. Object: try to last longer than Tyler... who is a master hulla-hooper.

Present time! Tyler would NOT stop wiggling his loose tooth while opening presents. This shot shows him in action. Moments later the darn thing finally came out!

Handsome :)

This is the only picture I got of the pinata fun. I was to busy trying to protect the kids from getting too close to the swinging bat. For some reason they just kept inching towards it even while in full swing!

Here's the party gang! (or most of them at least)

Cake time!

♥ Birthday boy ♥

For the family party I put Deke in charge of making the cake.

Mr. Krabs from Sponge Bob! I think Deke did an excellent job!

More presents...

This was the gift Tyler got from his friend/sister Lexi. She had gathered all of Tyler's favorite things... money, rocks, and ice cream. I thought it was sweet.

Some of the party guests...

Deke helping Ty read the cards..

Showing off another hole in his mouth. We now call him Toothless Tyler!

Camp Richardson, Lake Tahoe!

We try to go camping at least once a year and this year we thought we'd check out Camp Richardson in Lake Tahoe. I had driven past it many times but had never actually been there. The campsites were super nice and clean and they had showers! I was really excited about the showers. Deke and I drove up of Friday morning before everyone else so we could enjoy a hike together. We hiked Eagle Falls all the way up to Eagle Lake. I had heard of it before but this was our first time hiking it. I couldn't believe that I have been to Tahoe several times a year since I was a kid and never had been there before. IT WAS BEAUTIFUL! After that we met up with everyone to set up camp. It was a blast and I hope we can do it again soon!

On our hike...

We really enjoyed seeing all the wild life up at Eagle Lake.

Deke bought an old 35mm Nikon camera and we took the opportunity to compare his and mine. I just have a simple Nikon digital, here are the results... this first one is from my camera

This second one is from his, (I think mine is better) hehe...

Enjoying Eagle Lake!

This lake was so clean and pure, I just wanted to jump in!

There Deke is with his new camera..

Camp fire time!

Here's Tyler throwing a fit. I don't even remember what it was about.

Saturday morning cartoons on the Ipod!

Fishing in the Tahoe Keys. We were told it was better than fishing in the lake but we still didn't catch anything.

Here is their attempt to fish in Emerald Bay and again, no luck.

Lower Eagle Falls

Admiring Emerald Bay

And we couldn't camp at Camp Richardson without stopping at their famous ice cream shop!

This bad boy was mine and quite delicious!

I'm going to admit right now that I threw most of the sundae in the trash. I couldn't handle it!