Brady is THREE

My favorite little boy in the whole world turned three last week.  He amazes me every single day and my love for him grows faster than he does (which is really fast).  He got a good report at his 3rd year check-up and he is 32 inches tall (a little more than 50th percentile) and weighs 34 pounds (about 75th percentile).

He is interested in any and all sports (with a strong preference to golf, basketball and baseball).  His favorite color is green.  He likes to watch Dora the Explorer, Go Diego Go, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Cars and Toy Story.  His speech is very good and his vocabulary is constantly growing.  He's starting to use very long sentences and correct grammar.  He is completely potty trained.  

He's shy around new people at first and then he warms up and acts like himself. The secret to getting him to do anything (brush his teeth, get dressed, eat dinner, things like that) is to turn it into a competition and see who can win or who can finish first.  He is a total boy and has a very sweet personality.  He has a way of being funny and serious at the same time.  What else can I say other than he is just perfect!

We stretched out the birthday celebration as much as possible, starting with a trip to Chuck-E-Cheese on his actual birthday, June 3 (Friday).  It was just me and Brady and we had a wonderful time.  He spent 95% of his tokens on the Basketball game (surprise, surprise!)  

He shoots...

He SCORES!!!

Air Hockey

Watching Chucky sing

Quick break for some pizza and water

Then its back to the Basketball game

He wasn't too sure about "the BIG MOUSE"

After Chuck-E-Cheese, we came home and I started working on my first ever home-made birthday cake.  His party theme was Cars, so I attempted a Lighting McQueen cake.  I am happy with the way it turned out (considering I'm a complete novice), but being the perfectionist that I am, I think it could have been better.

I used a yellow cake mix and a Wilton car-shaped cake pan.  I made the buttercream icing myself and colored it using Wilton's gel food coloring.  I think coloring the icing was the most time consuming part.  I did the red several days before hand (hint: if you ever need to make red icing, use Wilton's no-taste red) because I had heard that it can take a while for the color to set in.  But I made the rest of the colors (black, blue, orange, yellow and white) on Friday night.

The "road" was made out of black sugar paper.  After the cake was baked and cooled, I just outlined everything in black and then filled in all the colors using Wilton's tip #18 stars.  Oreo cookies made the wheels and voila!

Then, Saturday morning was his birthday party at The Big Bounce.  If you aren't familiar with The Big Bounce, it is an indoor playground with bounce houses galore and the kids just LOVE it!  It was hard to get anyone to stand still long enough to get a picture, but here are a few of my favorites:

Garret and Brady

Garret and Brady again

Ian

Ian again

The group picture was hard to get.  Two of the girls were not having it!

Time to test out Mommy's homemade birthday cake

After the party, we came home, took naps and opened presents.  Brady got a set of golf clubs from Mommy and Daddy and so he spent the remainder of the night (and the last few days) playing golf.  Here he is on Sunday enjoying another piece of cake after a hot afternoon of golf:

Black icing is so flattering....or not.

He also got this water sprinkler thingy from his friends Tristin and Macyn.  What a great way to cool off in this hot summer heat.