Everett is 3.

Three-year-old birthdays are the best. Anticipation is high; expectations are low.

Everett has been talking about his cookie monster cake and a birthday trip to the Lazy 5 Ranch for months. Finally, the big day arrived.

Everett chose spaghetti for his birthday dinner. 

Faye-girl was happy about that choice.

Elmo and Cookie Monster cake pops. (Side note: I was going to go all out and make the entire Sesame Street crew, but simplified and just did these two characters. Because of that, I returned several items at Wal-Mart: melting chocolate, little candies, etc. The Wal Mart employee informed me that everything I was returning would be THROWN AWAY. I was shocked. I had just bought the items the day before, and they were certainly not near their expiration date or anything. Do all stores do this?? Or is it just one more reason to abhor Wal Mart??)

Cute boy contemplating blowing out his candles.

He has seriously been talking about his cake, "wif cookie monster's FACE on it!" for months!

The Holmes cousins were in town for a Spring Break visit. Perfect; no need to invite any more party guests.

Faye even got a cake pop.

Newest cousin Truman enjoyed watching the birthday games. (And started crawling at our house!)

Everett received wonderful presents from family.

I made him his baby book for his present. I am embarrassed to admit I am not a scrap-booker and not even a very good digital book-maker, but at least he has a book of pictures!

This is the game Carson gifted to Everett. It's called something like, "Guess what's on my head." It was really fun.

Don't tell, but Everett melts my heart the most of all my kids. He has a sweet little voice and often tells me I'm the nicest mommy he's ever had. He is a world-class snuggler. He has begun sounding out short words and may join his brother in the reading club soon. (We discovered the Sound Box books at the library, which are awesome!) Everett is our goofy kid who likes to purposefully make us all laugh. He also sure knows how to make his brother mad. When they are talking in their beds before they go to sleep, Carson is usually rattling off some random facts or something. Everett will start repeating calmly, "you're not right, Carson." Carson, of course, gets more and more angry each time Rett accuses him of being wrong, because he IS RIGHT. Everett is a master at staying calm and riling his brother up. Everett also requires the most patience on my part and creative discipline strategies. He can throw some great tantrums and be a real stinker sometimes. We are working on it though. We sure love this boy and don't know what we would do without him.