Flanagan Clan

The past two days have been pretty busy in this household as we’ve celebrated Patrick’s third birthday. Here are some of the many, many pictures that were taken during this time!

Patrick woke up on Thursday morning to find Mommy had made him a birthday coffee cake, complete with candles, for breakfast!

Patrick opens his first present on the morning of his birthday. It’s something that Auntie Rachel would definitely appreciate!

And Diane would appreciate this one: this is what happens when I get a hold of lots of colorful things… I color arrange them!

The Monkey Cake!

Ready for the party!

Patrick entertains Sammy with his “blowout” (apparently, that’s what those things are called… sounds more like the word for a messy diaper to me!)

Uncle Jonny entertains the boys with his monkey mask!

Patrick enjoying his party

Sammy and Opa being goofy

Daddy and Patrick playing around

Blowing out the candles

Admiring the Ooh-Hoo cake

Yummy cake and ice cream!

Patrick very excited about his new Curious George alarm clock from Grandma and Grandpa Flanagan

What is in this large bag from Oma, Opa and Uncle Jonny???

Plastic bowling set!

Cars and motorcycles!

The most fun “toys” of all, though, are always the balloons!!!

Exactly three years ago, on October 18th, 2004 at 4:07 PM, I gave birth to our first son, Patrick Thomas. He weighed 5 lb, 4 oz, and was 18 1/4 inches long. Three years later it’s hard to believe that Patrick was ever that small. Here are pictures from each of Patrick’s previous birthdays. It’s amazing to see how much he’s grown!!!

Patrick on the day of his birth

Patrick on his first birthday

Patrick on his second birthday

Patrick a few days before his third birthday!

This was definitely an impulse buy, but I couldn’t resist!

We had, lying around the house, my very first digital camera that I received as a Christmas gift while I was in college. It was quite the camera in it’s day, but has since been made obsolete by many new, slicker models out there. It also appeared to be broken, because, although it had fresh batteries, it kept on giving low battery errors and telling me to change them! So, before putting the camera out of commission for good, I let Patrick play with it a little bit. He quickly figured out how to snap pictures, and had a lot of fun taking pictures of Sammy, his toys, Daddy and Mommy. It was quite interesting to see what he came up with. Here are just a few of over 275 pictures he took!!!

Sammy playing with a ribbon

Sammy pulling himself up on the coffee table

Pictures in one of our coffee table books

One of Patrick’s puppets

Self-portrait

Daddy!

A Dinosaur!

A DUCK!

He actually arranged these bowls in order to take this picture… artistic, huh?

Here are a few pictures of the cake I made today for Jonny’s birthday party. I got the inspiration online, while looking for cake recipes. I changed the recipe a little bit, and this is what I came up with. Isn’t it cute?

It’s a triple chocolate cake with a milk chocolate mousse layer in the center. The frosting is vanilla-flavored, and the “bow” is made out of Fruit by the Foot.

Another view

It’s not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, but considering everything, I think it turned out really well. The real test will be tonight, when we eat it!!!