EVERYTHING EADS: The Birthday Celebration Weekend

Sorry it has taken me a week to post the birthday pictures. Life has just been crazy busy lately and I haven't had the chance to sit down and blog much. I actually started this post about 4 days ago but am finally sitting down to finish.

This year we opted to not do a traditional party for Jacob's birthday. With me working and 5 years of big parties behind us, I thought it might be fun (and less stressful) to do something different. We decided to go to Moody Gardens in Galveston for the day. We would make it a family event and only invite cousins just to keep it simple. After a few weeks of planning, our "one day of fun" turned into a weekend but that is alright! A good time was had by ALL and hopefully Jacob will never forget it!

We were lucky enough to get to stay in a beach house on the canal and decided to head on down Friday night so we could wake up Saturday morning and already be down there. After braving the Friday afternoon traffic, we finally made it to the beach house!

Jacob was so excited to see his cousins Jonah & Taylor and the kids were up and at 'em early Saturday morning to get the day started!

We started out visiting the Aquarium Pyramid.

We had tickets to the 3D IMAX show so we left the aquarium and headed on over to the theater. With our 3D glasses on, we were ready to go!

All three 2 year olds actually survived the 30 minute movie, which was impressive! However, nothing that a little marshmallows can't fix =)

After the IMAX, Mandi and I took the big kids to ride on the simulator. You sit in seats and watch a screen while your seat moves and shakes, etc. Our ride was on a submarine that got attacked by a giant squid! The kids were soooo scared before it began because they weren't sure what to expect....can u see the look of fear in their poor little faces?

Jacob couldn't even fake a smile! However, after it was over, they were grinning from ear to ear and asked if we could ride it again!!

We went back over to the Aquarium and finished seeing the rest of the sea life we didn't get to see earlier. Unfortunately, in transit, I dropped my camera on the concrete!!!! The flash quit working so needless to say I didn't get any cool pix of the sting rays, sharks, eels, etc. But, here are a few more pictures from our time at Moody Gardens. We had a great time exploring everything!

After Moody Gardens we headed back to let the little ones nap. Jonah gave Jacob his birthday present...
And so you can guess what they spent the next few hours doing....

For dinner we decided to eat at Rainforest Cafe. That was QUITE the experience!! Jacob shared his birthday dinner with elephants, gorillas, butterflies and all kinds of rainforest animals! He got a special cup that lights up and even a volcano slice of cake! They came out with 3 pieces of chocolate cake piled together like a volcano with ice cream in the middle and sparklers on top! They made him stand on his chair and pound his chest like a monkey while they sang to him! It was so cute!! I bought a disposal camera (remember those things?) while we there so I will have pictures, whenever I can remember to go turn it in for copies! After dinner, we went on the water ride that was there! I had no idea it even existed! The kids had a good time floating through the rainforest watching all the animals come to life. After about 3 hours of being there, we decided it was too late to drive all the way back home so we spent the night again. What a great ending to a long but fun day!

The next morning we woke up and headed back home pretty early. I had ordered Jacob's cake and it was going to be ready that morning. Since we were giving him a Wii, I decided he should have a cake to match! For some reason, my camera cooperated enough to take these, but then wouldn't work when it was present opening time =( You'll have to just take my word that he was more than pleasantly surprised with his Wii! He has been playing non-stop the past week and I am pretty sure has achieved super star bowler status!