Aiden is 3!

Aiden Monkey turned 3 on Monday!  We celebrated his birthday over the course of two days - Saturday and Monday.  This year we just kept it simple and had our families join us and it was so nice. Saturday we went to the McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park in Scottsdale and it was so great.  We will definitely be going back! Admission is free and then you just purchase tickets if you want to go on one of the 3 rides - the antique carousel or two different trains.

Aiden decided he wanted to ride the carousel first and was adamant they sit in the hand cart instead of on the horses..haha.

Aiden spotted my mom and Amber entering the park :)

We got Miss Janie fed and then we all went on the bigger train ride.

The group - Mom was taking the picture and Kent seems to be hiding ;)

There was a little museum and then you could tour this train.  The car at the end (the Roald Amundsen Pullman Car) is best known for its presidential travel.  It was actually used by Presidents Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower!

I thought Aiden would be excited to tour the train, so we didn't spend too much time in the museum before we went out to the train.  But I was wrong!  We had made it about halfway through (there were just 3 or 4 train cars so it wasn't huge or anything) when Aiden had a little freak out and insisted we turn around!  I don't know what happened!  Nonetheless, he was happy when we made it back inside the museum ;)

We all suspected the little freak out may be hunger related so we decided to have some lunch next.

They have two awesome play areas at the park and Aiden was in heaven.  Seriously, we may just go back with a picnic sometime and play on the playgrounds!

Aiden's at the top of the slide here.

We still had some tickets, so Aiden went on the train again with Trent and Grandma and Grandpa Knuckles.

Here they come ;)

Back to the train station.

Miss Janie may have played with Aiden's Mater while he was on the train.  He spotted it right away and took it back right when he got back ;)

Then we headed over to check out the Model Railroad Building.

It was so neat to see all of the little model railroads and trains.  I love anything miniature and it was amazing to see all of the detail they put into everything!

Everything was Janie sized ;)

Some of the trains had characters riding on them.  This one had Spiderman :)

Lastly, I went on the kiddie train ride with Aiden.

I felt a little silly on it :)

As I said before, we had such a great time and will definitely be back. And the weather was perfect.  It was a great day!

Monday I tried to really spoil Aiden :)

He didn't wake up until 9 and then we went out for donuts.  I didn't even change him into clothes, we just went in his jammies ;)  We went to Bosa's Donuts just down the road and Aiden picked out this donut with chocolate frosting and sprinkles :)

Picture isn't great b/c I took it with my ancient phone.

Sunday night Trent and I were talking about meeting for lunch in Tempe.  One of the first things Aiden said when he woke up was how he wanted to go to slides and have chicken nuggets and fries, so I thought we could meet Trent at Chick-fil-a, but it turns out the one near him w/ the play place has closed down.  So it worked out that Grandma Knuckles texted wanting to take Aiden out to McDonald's for lunch :)

Later that afternoon I worked on Aiden's cake and we just hung out. That evening our families came over for cake and presents.

Our presents for Aiden before our families showed up.

The first present Aiden opened was the whole set of Cars from Grandma and Grandpa Knuckles and then he couldn't seem to move past them!  This happened last year too where he gets overwhelmed and opens a gift and wants to start playing with it immediately..haha. We had to keep reminding him that he still had other gifts to open!

I didn't get a picture of every gift.

I got this book (My First Airplane Ride) for Aiden from the library a while back and he loved it so much that he memorized the whole thing!  Then he kept mentioning how he wanted it for his "birday", so I was glad I could find it for him.

Janie was loving all of the wrapping paper :)

Then we sung and had cake.  I was pretty pleased with how the cake turned out (at least the top).  I did the 3 by simply placing a cookie cutter on there and filling it with sprinkles and then removing it (found the idea on Pinterest of course!).

I was cracking up because Aiden was singing along with us!

So as usual I was terrible about getting pictures of everyone else, so I quickly snapped these pictures as Kent and Tanis were getting ready to head out :/

Bummed I don't have any with Mom and Amber (Dad was stuck cleaning the church), but by that point Aiden was so done.

It was a nice day though and Aiden is still telling us how much he loves his birthday presents :)  We went to his 3-year check-up today so I'll post his stats next.  We love this boy to death, tantrums and all (more on that later!), and are so grateful for the joy he brings into our lives.