Wild West Birthday

Gavin's birthday party was almost a month ago, but with so much going on and about 600 pictures to go through and edit, I'm just now getting around to posting pictures.

We live in a ranch house, both D and I grew up in the country, but to call us cowboys is kind of the antithesis of us. Usually we end up picking the non country bands to go see at the Rodeo every year. Although the fact that we go to the Rodeo is probably not helping my point here. However, we decided to throw Gavin a Wild West third birthday party since we happen to have the perfect scenery.


I pulled a lot of decorations from my mother-in-law's wide collection of western decor and made some others. I was going for sort of a vintage western feel. I also found that it was a lot cheaper to buy bandanna materiel than several bandannas, and I could use it for so many things from ties on the mason jar glasses to the gift bags.

I wish there was a closeup of the banner I made, but oh well. The thing was huge.


Gavin's cake was probably the fastest one I have ever made. It was chocolate with a caramel icing and had chocolate spots all over topped with a chocolate horse. Too bad my outlaw brother-in-law doesn't like chocolate.


I saw the idea for this "eggs and bacon" dessert somewhere on a website. To say they were easy to make is an understatement.




This is the first birthday cake Gavin has eaten in three years. I actually didn't have much hope that he would eat this one either, but maybe it was his buddy River encouraging him. Gavin would have loved an ice cream cake but it would not have made it ten seconds in the Texas heat.

The kids played a few games after decorating their stick horses. Those horses were then put to the test.


Gavin thought the cow patty game was pretty funny and some of the kids had serious strategy when it came to a game called, "There's a snake in my boot!"

My mother-in-law was also gracious enough to give all of the kids rides on Sweetie. This horse truly lives up to its name.


I tried to take a picture of the families upon arrival with the intention of mailing them out, but in the spirit of modern times, I'll e-mail them the file instead. I'm only going to post a few family members to keep the others a surprise for their inbox.


At the end of the day, the notorious "Guns Out" Gavin got away.

He probably sailed off into the the sunset.


But if I look really hard, I can sometimes hear the clacking of those boots and the soft giggle of a rough and tumble cowboy.