Roaaaar!!!

Dinosaur party - he'd been asking for one for 3 months. That is, until 2 days before when he changed his mind and asked for a dragon party instead. Too late kid. Dinosaurs it is.

Since most of the kids were between 2.5 and 3, most of my pictures looked like the one below. T. rex and family were a lot more accommodating.

Abby?

There were the usual suspects in attendance

Rowan

Abby

Ashley

Benji

Plus a few others tall and small

Tall: Leah

Medium: Trixie (with Ash), although she's likely to pass up Leah in a couple of years.

Small: Alex, this guy in yellow, not the Alex below. I know sizes.

Tiny: James, not Alex

   Of course, no party is replete without a little drama. I had promised Rowan a dinosaur piñata for his party. After realizing this was something that involved hitting with a stick, smashing, and treats, he was totally into it. We spent an evening making a T. rex body out of paper mache. Now stop here for a second and think about a 3 year old with a bowl full of goopy, sticky stuff, some newspaper, and a house we've been trying to keep clean. The next night I decided to make the rest of the T. rex after he went to bed. I got the head (a very scary head) and all the appendages formed and ready for attachment finished up late that night. Feeling rather proud of myself, I set them out to dry on the kitchen table and made sure to push the bench in so the dogs couldn't easily hop up to inspect them.

   At 6:45 AM, I got up for work and entered the kitchen to find dinosaur parts covering the entire floor. I can't identify the culprit, so let's just call her Allie. Allie and the others danced happily around me so obviously excited that I came to see them. And since it was only 6:45 AM and the boys were sleeping, I had to have a moment of silent rage. I picked up pieces of wet, sticky globs of newspaper and started chasing and smacking Allie. She obviously thought it was some kind of game, since I wasn't yelling, and continued to dance around me excitedly. I finally booted them outside and considered myself beaten. 

   You may not have realized it, but there are a lot of ins and outs to dinosaur piñata making. You can't just whip one out in an evening. There's the paper mache part, the drying, the attaching, the stuffing, the re-drying, the decorating, and the painting!! So....I moved on.

Introducing: The dinosaur egg

I stuffed it full of baby dinosaurs and goodies. It was as solid as concrete. No 3 year old had a chance. Brian finally had to give it a few hard whacks.

The rest of the party

The big, bad 3-year old.