Tuckers Birthday...

{a cute sign that Tuckers pre-school class made him for his birthday}

On a side note, Tuckers teacher (and my good friend) Lexie told me that the week of his birthday they were learning the letter F. It was also another girls birthday that week in their class; her name is Maddie. The kids were putting the letter F in front of the birthday kids names. So, Maddie became Faddie; which they thought was SO funny. Lexie said they then moved on to Tuckers name. You all know what word they were shouting with Tuckers name. :) They became Faddie and F***er. :) She quickly put an end to that game. :) Poor Tucker, is never going to be able to play name games of that type. ever.

Anyhoo....

I still can not believe that Tucker is 4! I just look at him and remember him as a little baby and it's hard to believe that he is already so big! This year he had told me on a few different occasions that he wanted a birthday where everyone jumps out and yells SURPRISE! I don't even know if he really understood everything about a surprise party, but that's what we did. I didn't mention one word about a birthday party to him, ever. We talked about his birthday; but never a party, really. His birthday fell the day before Thanksgiving this year. So on the day of his birthday, Ben took him to the store to pick out a gift with the money he had received from his cousin, Ketyon. He was gone from like 11:30-12:30. In that hour, I had about 10 of his friends show up. It was so much fun! :) We all hid downstairs, and when he got home, Ben took him straight down there and we totally surprised him! For being the one who wanted the surprise, he really didn't know how to react or what to say! :) It was so cute. This picture pretty much sums it up! He just smiled and looked at everyone. I could tell he was so happy to have his friends over for his birthday.

I had planned on just letting them have at it in the basement with all the toys, but one by one all the kids just started handing him his gifts, so right then and there he just started digging right in! I didn't even have time to see who gave him what. I knew that I wasn't going to be able to stop that train after it had started. :)

With the help of my brother and sister in law, who luckily got here early, we were able to finish all the food in time! If it were not for them, I could not have done it! Chicken salad sandwiches...delicious! And then the ol' trusty fruit dip and fruit and veggie dip and veggies. Can't go wrong with that. Homemade oreos HAD to be on the menu. They are my favorites!

Since Carly was in town, she got to come for his birthday! We were so happy! She even brought him some dried fruit that she made herself! :)

We love Carly! Her and Tucker are practically like brother & sister. She has always been like an OLDER sister to him. She loves to be in charge and we love her for it! :) But my favorite line of the day came when one of Tuckers friends, Kendyll started to leave, Ben told Tucker to go say good bye to them and thank them for coming. Tucker turned around and headed to the front door to say good bye to her. Carly heard what Ben had said and immediately did the same thing. She stepped right in front of Tucker as he was about to say good-bye and said,

' Good Bye Kendyll! Thanks for coming to my friend, Tuckers birthday party!'

She also told on Ben. She came up to me at one point during the party and said, 'Taraka, Ben just let Tucker have ANOTHER oreo!' like Tucker had had enough and she didn't think he should have any more! :) We love you Carly! :) What would we do without you?

Tucker & Garret... so cute!

The beautiful homemade Spiderman cake... :)

{don't be jealous! I am currently taking orders!} :)

Tucker & Drew...

The beautiful McLuskie girls...

This photo doesn't even do it justice as to how MESSY our house was. Our house isn't very big. Add about 10 adults and 10 children-CRAZY! Also, it happened to be the week of our first BIG snowfall, like blizzard-like snowfall. So, kids came in their boots and coats and hats and gloves. Which, of course, is great; but there was like a lake at our front door from all the melting boots! :)

Tucker had to dig into every toy that day, like as soon as he finished his cake!

The Tuck and the Taters...

Opening a few last gifts after everyone went home. I waited on our gifts and the gift from my dad and Kathryn. He got so many great gifts from his friends, and was totally happy and satisfied with those. ( I really should have waited on these for Christmas!) :)

Thank you to everyone who came to be with my BIG boy on his birthday! And thank you to all who helped with the party! (you know who you are!) We are so very grateful to have wonderful family and friends so close who love us and help us out so much!

And we are ESPECIALLY grateful for this BIG boy! He is so so so much fun!

He is such a fun and smart little boy. He is always making us laugh, or trying to make us laugh. He always is coming up with new jokes and tests them out on us and asks us if they are funny. :) His favorite cartoon right now is Scooby-doo. His favorite colors are blue & green. (Just like his mama.) :) He loves to color and draw and spell and count. He is so smart. He has always had such a good vocabulary and he says things that seriously make us stop short in our tracks with our jaws wide open. He picks up things so fast. He loves to dance. He has always loved shake his booty. He loves to rock out to his Phineas & Ferb and Spongebob Squarepants CD's. He is really into boy things right now. He loves to have 'boy time' with his dad where they do push up s and sit ups. No joke! He is ALL boy. We like to tease him that he loves barbies and girly things. We were up at my dads house the other day decorating for my sisters baby shower; she is having a girl so his house was all decked out in pink. Tucker walked into the room and stopped and said, 'whoa, I've never seen papa's house like this.' And I said, 'I know, it's all pink. And you love pink!' :) And he said, 'mom, I'm pretty much the only cool thing in here.' And he, of course, was dressed up as a Transformer at the time. Another one of his obsessions right now: dressing up! For Halloween he was spiderman. He wore that spiderman costume SO much (and still does) and loved dressing up so much, that I had to get him more. After Halloween I hit up all the costume sales and got him about 4-5 new costumes. I put them all together as one of his Christmas presents. He LOVES them! He is a different super hero every day! :) We are so lucky! We love our BIG boy!

But Seriously, wasn't he just this big?

{Tucker on his first birthday, three years ago!}