Iris Turns 3 - and a Scooby Doo Birthday Party

Right now my kids are big-time fans of Scooby Doo.  Whenever we have a movie night, they always choose to watch Scooby.  Every time.  Iris is particularly obsessed.  She's at that age where she has the most incredible imagination and it makes everything pretty magical.  This summer when we dropped the kids off at summer school, we didn't drive our mini-van.  Nope, it was the Mystery Machine.  And when we left the school, we always had to be sure that each member of the Scooby gang was buckled in.  Iris would ask : "Are you buckled in, Freddy?" and so on.  (Thankfully, her invisible friends buckled up quickly, unlike three year old Jude's invisible pal 'Jude' who took f o r e v e r.)

So the kids thought it would be a great idea to have a Scooby Doo party for Iris' birthday.   Not just any party, though, a Scooby costume party.

 

The brainstorming continued and they decided that we must also decorate our house to make it like a Scooby Doo haunted house.  We don't like to do anything too creepy so we stuck with cobwebs and spiders.

It worked out great with Halloween right around the corner.  They'll wear the costumes again then and we'll also leave up all those decorations, too.  Dual-purpose.  I like it!

I didn't make any of their costumes this year.  I went all out last year, so I took this year off.  :) These costumes all came from Amazon.

Iris took her role as Scooby veeery seriously.

 

Dan's brother, Josh, was in Texas on a business trip.  He rented a car and drove two hours out of his way to see us!  Not only was he game for dressing up as a Scooby character, but he also jumped right in to help with the party.  He made hamburgers and grilled with Dan.  He played pin the tag on Scooby with the kids as well as Hide-and-Seek.  He let Iris stamp him with her Scooby stamps.  He talked legos and model airplanes with Jude.  He's an engineer and has his pilot's license.  Not only can he fly planes but he has even built one!  Jude was totally in awe of him.

We all enjoyed seeing Josh so much!  He is such a great person and it's so fun to see Dan and him together.  They're both so witty - I think I was laughing most of the time!

The kids and I have a tradition of frosting the cake right before we sing Happy Birthday.  The birthday kid and I make the frosting together.  It's something they really love and look forward to, even though it's such a small thing.  It ended up getting late on Iris' birthday so we asked if she wanted to do her cake the next day.  Which, of course meant the party would continue for one more day.  She liked that idea.

 

 The next day she wore her Scooby costume the entire day.  It was so cute.

Then we finally frosted that cake.

(Those are graham cracker Scooby snacks.) 

 While we were making the frosting, Iris accidentally spilled vanilla on her Scooby costume, so she put on a sparkly headband and called it good.

 

 Of course, we did have to wash the costume immediately so she could wear it again the following day.

 

 While I took this photo of Iris, Indigo put her mustache on Hazel.  It reminded me of this.

Oh, I've got my hands full with these guys, all right!  But my heart's full, too.  ;)