The Wilson Family Overseas: Tana's 3rd birthday!

Tana enjoyed her train car cake for her birthday. The girls decorated the chocolate cars and Mommy made strawberry later.

We celebrated Tana's 3rd birthday at our new home in Sittard, Netherlands. After the first week of school and all the unpacking we've been doing, we decided to hang out at home. Dan spent a few hours in the afternoon putting together the girls' new swing. It took us a long time to find one to buy in the area and we finally found it at an unlikely place called Heuts, an auto store, after looking through an ad we got in the mail.

We used frosting as glue to stick the candy on the train cars.

Loralynn and I decorated our covered patio while Tana took a nap. We ordered home delivery pizza and doners for dinner and shortly after, our friends Diane and Frank came over. The girls were utterly delighted to have their company. They got a tour of our messy house, and then we went outside to eat cake and open presents.

It was a simple celebration, and Tana loved it. We had made her train cake the day before. The girls loved decorating the chocolate train cars with candy and then after they went to bed I made a second strawberry train set and frosted them. It was a total of 17 train cars (I left the second engine car off)!

Tana opened her presents and was delighted about each one: a giant dog floor puzzle and water paint

Good thing it rained on Tana's birthday.

coloring book, a mermaid Barbie, and Barbie car, kids' owl umbrella, and a princess block puzzle with six different scenes. We gave Loralynn 10 euro to buy Tana a gift a few days before, and she bought two Dutch board books (useful for us as parents to learn Dutch as well!), a wooden alphabet puzzle, and a rolling butterfly toy. She helped Daddy wrap them that night. She kept the gifts a secret almost until the end! When Tana went to open Loralynn's gifts at her celebration, Loralynn exploded with excited and told everything that was in the wrapping before Tana could get it torn open. I think Loralynn was more excited than Tana! It was so sweet and cute to watch.

Later with Oma and Opa Wilson on Skype, the girls opened a Dora memory and Candy Land game. They wanted to play right away. Tana's attention span for Candy Land isn't there yet, but she really enjoyed the memory (and is really good at it for just barely turning 3 years old! They also put the dog floor puzzle together before bedtime and played with the Barbies. The $3 umbrella we bought at WalMart this summer has been fought over a lot already and now Loralynn has decided she wants an umbrella for her birthday. It's very suitable for our weather here in the Netherlands, so why not? It was sunny the first week of August but since then the weather has been in the low 60s and rainy. Nonetheless, the birthday party was so fun.

Nutmeg, our daschund also celebrated her 8th birthday on the same day as Tana. I'm not making this up. Montana truly was born on the day that Nutmeg turned 5 years old. Tana said she loves sharing her birthday with Nutmeg. The sweet doggie got a "doggie cake" with candles and a new fluffy pillow. She was a happy dog.

Check out the video of the happy birthday song for Tana and then for Nutmeg: