Niko turned four!

Hooray hooray, our boy is four!

We've sort of been referring to Nikolai as for for about a month (we try really hard not to be *those people* who round their child's age up way in advance, but he really felt four for the past month) so it's nice to be able to finally call him four.

I think I need to do a little birthday interview with Nikolai to ask him his favorite things, etc and preserve some of who he is right now. Four seems like a really incredible age and I'm excited to see who he is becoming and really want to record some of that. I will do that soon and post that it some future date, but for now, I'm going to write ad nauseum about his birthday party.

Nikolai has been on a Star Wars kick for a month or two so I rolled with it and we had a Star Wars themed birthday party. Nikolai helped me color some star ships to hang from the ceiling (the rainbow Death Star below is one of his masterpieces) and I used painter's tape to make a hyperspace jump on the window. 

I wanted to make a few treats for the kids to munch before we played games, so I spread some colored frosting on pretzel rods to be light sabers (two purple ones for Mace Windu! You go Mace Windu!) and I just happened to find a Star Wars jello mold at the grocery store the day before, so I made a bunch of those too. Also, Nikolai LOVED them so that was a win.

Ok, I'm only including the next picture because Jesse's photo bomb is the best.

8 of Nikolai's friends were able to come, and we had a blast playing Star Wars Says (simon says but with things like "fly on Rey's speeder" and "walk like C3P0"), Hyperspace red light green light, and doing a Star Wars themed treasure hunt ("look for the next clue in a place where Han Solo might have a juice box (and definitely not shoot first)"). 

It was pretty chaotic, but I think it went really well!

I got a little ambitious and made an R2D2 cake! It's just cake mix and store bought frosting, but I made marshmallow fondant for the decorations. Oddly enough, because the shapes were so geometric it was actually super simple to cut out and put on the cake. I am incredible pleased with how it turned out! 

I made some cupcakes too, just in case we needed more cake, but they ended up being leftover. Mmmm!

And a blue stripe of cake in the middle:

 I had about 2 days to plan the party (in between when I got back from visiting my family in UT and Nikolai's birthday) but I'm really pleased with how things went. Most important, I think Nikolai LOVED having all his friends come over and having a fun time with them! Happy Birthday Nikolai!