Austin's 3rd Birthday!

My big boy turned 3 years old on October 15th!  We had a big weekend of fun planned and it all started on the Friday before his birthday.  Am Ma was in town visiting and so we all enjoyed a birthday "eve" dinner at Outback.  Austin ate half a loaf of bread and a small bowl of croutons.  Hey, it was his birthday dinner so I let it ride.  After our meal a huge party of servers came over to our table singing "Happy Birthday" to Austin.  I just knew that at least one of the boys was going to start crying, but they actually got really excited about it!  Austin topped off his bread and crouton dinner with half a bowl of ice cream and we all came home to prepare for the big day.

Saturday morning Austin woke us up in his usual fashion and took all of .5 seconds to notice the huge pile of presents sitting on the kitchen counter.  After a small birthday doughnut (which is all he told us he wanted for his birthday for weeks), we gathered around to watch Austin open his gifts.  This took much longer than expected because instead of tearing through each gift to hurriedly see what was in the next, Austin wanted to open and play with each thing one at a time.  I'm pretty sure now that I could have given him just a doughnut and a toy train and it would have still gone down as the best birthday ever.

Austin got a new Thomas the Train layout for his train table and Owen even got a couple of things to unwrap as well...just like my parents did for me and my sister when we were kids.  I made some apple spice waffles for breakfast and we spent the rest of the morning playing with the new trains and working on the new layout.

After naps, Ryan and I took Austin to do one of his most favorite activities....play mini golf!  Am Ma stayed home with Owen so Austin could have us all to himself for at least a few hours on his special day.  We golfed and played video games and then picked up some treats and headed to the park for a snack and to play on the playground.  It was a perfect afternoon!!

Once we got back home, we got busy making Austin a special birthday dinner.  At his request we had cheeseburgers on the grill with extra pickles, mac & cheese and potato salad.  I brought Austin his plate and he sent it back to the kitchen requesting one last thing...a candle in his burger!  So we sang Happy Birthday for the 26th time and Austin blew out his candle for the 15th time that day.  The big birthday bash was topped off with a big come from behind win from our Clemson Tigers!  It was quite a day!