The Dorsey's

For a couple of months, all Bryson has talked about is wanting to go fishing and camping. For Bryson's birthday, Robert took him to the store and let him buy his very own fishing pole. He chose a Spider-Man fishing pole. Thankfully we have so many places close to us where they can go fish. He decided to take him to Oak Mountain because there is so much to do there. Robert packed them and lunch so they could stay as long as Bryson wanted to. I thought he would get bored since most of the time you just sit there waiting for a fish, but Robert said he did pretty good. He caught a fish too! After fishing they went over to the beach at Oak Mountain and Bryson loved splashing around in the water. Now that the weather is warmer, I'm sure he will be doing a lot more fishing.

When it comes to birthday parties, I love to go all out. From the cake, decorations and unique party favors, I love being crafty and I try to make the party as much fun as possible. This year Bryson chose a tough theme. Since before Christmas, I have been asking him what kind of birthday party he wanted. He has been into Despicable Me, Wreck it Ralph, Monsters University and Legos so I figured he would choose one of those. I started looking on Pinterest and some other party websites for ideas for all of those themes so I could get a head start. Bryson finally decided that he wanted a Play-Doh party. What in the world was I supposed to do with a Play-Doh party? What kind of cake would I get made? What would I put on his birthday shirt? What kind of party favors would I give? Every year it has been so easy and fun to do all of those things, but not this year. I finally had everything figured out except for his shirt. I just could not think of anything cute to go on his birthday shirt. I finally convinced him to chose a character to go with his Play-Doh party and he chose Wreck it Ralph. So we had a Wreck it Ralph Play-Doh party. Once he picked that, everything was so easy to do. I found a cheap party supply website through Pinterest and found a ton of cheap Wreck it Ralph supplies. They had everything and it was way cheaper than going to Party City. I also found the best cake and thank goodness Robert's sister Amy makes awesome cakes.For the trees, she used fondant and tootsie rolls and Bryson thought they were Play-Doh trees! I found a few t-shirt ideas online and showed them a local lady to see if she could make it. She said she could, but she waited til the last minute. The shirt wasn't at all how we wanted it, but it still turned out OK and Bryson loved it. This is the first year that I have given a bag of "junk" as a party favor but I just could not think of anything Play-Doh related. His invitations came with these cute labels so we put those in the bags to make them cute. I found some small Play-Doh party favor containers at Toys R Us so each kid got 2 of those and then we took Bryson to Party City to choose some other things. He chose small squirt guns, frogs and lizards, and fruit snacks.
Then we had to decide where to have the party. Every party venue is so expensive and honestly not worth the price. Not only that, but there's only so much a 4 year can and will do. Every year around Bryson's birthday, the weather has been so unpredictable. Some years it's been nice weather on his actual birthday then cold, rainy, or snowy on his party day and other years its been cold, rainy, or snowy on his birthday but then beautiful on his party day. We decided this year to have his party at the park and take our chances with the weather. We even chose to do it a week later then normal hoping that by mid-March the weather would be nice. Thank goodness it was!This was the first year we invited some of his friends from school. It was so much fun having people other than our family and friends there. All the kids had fun, but for some reason Bryson wouldn't play with any of them. It was so crazy because the friends that came are the friends that he always plays with on the playground at school. Either way, everybody had a great time.
After the party, we went to Top it Off with my family. Bryson loves going there and it's so nice to have something like that here in Helena. It's so crazy that Bryson is alsready 4! These past 4 years have went by way too fast.