First off, before I forget, all the pictures where taken by Betsy of b.mullinax photography. She was awesome and I was thrilled with the results.
Now, on to the party! I spent months getting everything together for this party, you know, since I have to live up to my Martha Stewart Miranda nickname =)
I made the cones and homemade trail mix and the hubby made the awesome little boxes for them to sit in.
The table with 'golden nuggets'
I am a bit saddened that this is the only picture that managed to get taken of my adorable silverware rolls...a little photoshop cropping might be in order, but as of right now, this is what you get.
This is the second year (my youngest was turning two) that we have done a party for the boys together (since their birthdays are 2 weeks apart). Last year I had heard about how some people had accepted donations for a charity of their choice in lieu of receiving presents. I LOVED this idea on many levels... we already have Toys R Us in our house (or at least it feels like it), I don't want anyone to feel obligated to bring something for both children (in case they are only friends with one of them), on the other side of that, I don't want one child to receive more presents than the other, we donate things all the time and I like the idea of teaching the children to donate as well and finally I like the idea that the party is a celebration of them and not what they can get from their friends. They do still get birthday presents, we (ourselves and our families) give them presents on each of their birthdays and they get to pick where we are eating dinner that day. They are not deprived...anything but! I will post pics of their playroom at a later date. You will see. =)
This was the dress up table.
Another view of the dress up table. I made black vests and sashes for everyone. We also had bandannas, eye patches and telescopes to complete the look. In the invitation I had asked that everyone come in jeans and a white t-shirt.
One last picture from the dress up table. This was at the front of the table to show the kiddos what all they were supposed to get.
I had a little table set up in the back of the pavilion to entertain in between activities. I LOVED these little cans.
Somehow he got the nickname Pirate Bob....IDK, I had the girls who babysit the boys were helping me out at the party. They were silly and a GIANT help!
The hubby and I made two pirate ships out of some washer and dryer boxes. He put his blood, sweat and tears into these...ok, maybe not the tears, but definitely the other two, however that is a story for another day.
I loved the little signs that I made! These started out in life as pretty ugly Easter signs from the dollar store. I took off the ribbon and repainted them. Used some twine to hang them, some vinyl to put the letters on and some ink to kind of distress them.
This was their cake! I can't believe I forgot the masts!! Either way, they loved them. The 'ocean' is a chocolate cavity maker with some peanut butter cookie in between the layers. Matthew's boat was blueberry pound cake and Andrews was strawberry cake.
The party took place at a park and during some down time, the kids wandered over to the playground, of course =) This is my youngest with one of the girls who helped me out for the day.
One of the games we played was pop the cannonball. I put goodies inside most of the balloons and they had to go around and pop them all. This was a great game for everyone but my 2 year who decided that he didn't like the sound that popping balloons makes and freaked out seconds into it...probably with this balloon pop (that is him in the background).
There was buried treasure to be found! OK, maybe not so buried, but you get the idea =)
Another game we did was having a cannonball fight between the two pirate ships. We split the kiddos up into two groups and they got into their pirate ships and ATTACKED!!! 
See what I mean...ATTACKED!
Listening to the first clue of the scavenger hunt.
The kids running to find the next clue. We ended up having 5 clues since the party was mainly 3 and 4 year olds, who have notoriously short attention spans. I was worried that they would lose interest after a few, but I bet we could have actually had more, they were having a blast.
They found their loot!
Overall, I would have to say that the party was a success. There was a slight rain delay in getting things started and it fell on a weekend when some sort of bug was going around, so we had a lot of friends who couldn't make it due to sick little ones,but the ones who were there seemed to really enjoy it. I got reports from several parents that over a week later they were still talking about it. There was one little boy who didn't stay for the whole party, since he had another party to go to (at Chuck E Cheese's) and apparently at the end of the day ours was the one he was still talking about. I think I spent about six months, off and on, planning it. Next year is going to be carnival and no I am not already looking into ideas...not at all...ok, maybe a little ;)
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