It seems like the minute Thanksgiving was over, we hit the ground running into birthday and Christmas month. As you can see, there was quite a bit of planning and preparation for Zach's birthday party. His friend party was on Saturday the 5th and the 6th (his actual birthday was even crazier!). We started out by letting him open his present from us. That was actually just going out into the garage, because we got him a new bike, the Power Rangers Jungle Fury bike to be exact. (The last one at Toys R Us and they were clearanced out - to be even more exact...the stress of it all!)
Craig's good friend, Brad Franchione, was in town coaching the Junior College National Championship game for Blinn Junior College, so Craig left a little after Zach opened his present from us and rode around our freezing cold garage to go watch Brad's game. Which they won in a last minute play - very exciting!
Zach and I got ready to go to the Candy Cane Invitational - his first gymnastics meet and really first sporting event to participate in. He was so excited and I was a little nervous. Especially when we got there and the crowd was rather large. Zach was a champ though. He waited patiently while all the other kids went before him (or so it seemed). He got up and did his routine with such confidence. I was just so proud I didn't even pay attention to his score. The mom next to me (from our class) told me he had one of the higher scores (I believe it was a 9.5). At the end of all the kids routines, they had everyone sit on the gym floor and get their awards. They organized it so every kid got a medal and a chance to stand on the award stand. Even though it was set up like that, Zach still would have ranked fairly high without the weighting system! :) The girls who had the actual top scores were only 9.6. He did get 1st in his division and got to stand up and get his medal. He was so proud. He loves wearing his Candy Cane Invitational t-shirt and showing off his medal. They also mentioned as he was getting on the podium that it was his birthday. I have it all on video but didn't manage to catch many snapshots. It's a little hard to manage both and make sure he was getting up to get his medal etc. :) I really have to buy a SD card for the video camera to do double duty.
Off to our next event which was his preschool open house. Thank goodness it was pretty laid back and didn't matter that we were running in at the last minute. They gave us all of Zach's art projects and work from the semester and told us what each one was and what unit it went with. (We also had a teacher's conference, but I think I'll make a separate post since this is getting so long!)
Zach and I then ran back to CeCe's to get Dylan and get ready for the family to come over and celebrate Zach's birthday. Again, thank goodness we went super laid back. Just pizza and cake and presents. I think it's safe to say, Zach had a great 4th birthday.
Here are pics from Zach's b-day party with kids friends.
