Can't Believe We Have a 5 Year Old Boy!

Wow, it feels like I was just writing a post about Harrison's 4th birthday and now he's 5!!! This is a milestone year, it's starting Kindergarten, entering a new phase of life, the last year to use only one hand to show how old you are, and really starting to be a bigger kid! Nate and I are both feeling a little sad and wanting to slow time down. But we're also loving our clever, articulate, affectionate, loving, helpful guy, and lots of that comes with age.

Harrison had a very busy birthday! It started with having him help make his cake in the morning. I loved licking the beaters as a kid and enjoy letting my kids do it too. I have also made a little tradition out of taking pictures of them licking the beaters of their birthday cake each year.



At one point I said something about him being 5 and he was very surprised that he was already 5. "I thought I was still 4."


Then it was off to his last day of Vacation Bible School. He went every morning last week from 9:30-12:00 and loved it! It was put on by the same church where he went to Pre-School and one of his teachers, Miss Jane, was in charge. It was only $30 for the whole week, so I really couldn't resist. He had a great time singing songs, playing games, making crafts and learning Bible stories.


Here he is with some of the other kids in his Laughing Lobsters group and his counselor. There were two other boys in the group too.


Then we came straight home for his "party." In my family, we only did friend parties every other year. The off years we did family parties. Seeing as how we have no extended family here and our family is so small, we decided that on the off years we are going to have small parties. Once I explained that to Harrison, he was fine with it and very excited about his small party. It also works out very nicely that the small parties are falling on the year that mommy is pregnant!

So, we had Harrison's two closest friends, Logan and Andrew over for a pizza lunch, eaten off of Ben 10 Alien plates and cups. He was over the moon about those things! So easy to please!

Then we opened presents. Harrison loved the Transformers shirt (that Andrew's mom, Ashley made!!! She's so crafty!) and the Transformer toy!

He also loved the Ben 10 Alien Maker and extra aliens from Logan.

They all insisted on playing with the toys for the next 30+ minutes. I swear, with boys, there's really no need to plan anything. They just love playing.

We finally forced them to come over and eat cake.

I really wanted to make this Martha Stewart Chocolate Frosting that my friend Erin makes, so I ran it by Harrison and thankfully he was fine with it. The most amazing thing was that Nate actually loved it too. My husband loved a chocolate baked good, that's one for the record books. It did have yellow cake, that probably helped and he said it was because the frosting tasted like real chocolate. Must have been all those chocolate chips melted in there!

Then we headed over to Chuck E. Cheese. Except the one closest to us was closed, so after some scrambling on the cell phones, we located the next closest one, drove to Englewood and 45 minutes after originally getting in the car, we were there!

They all had lots of fun, and I was loving that this party was so easy and cheap! (Nate always uses these coupons he finds on-line for 100 tokens for $10.)

Speaking of Nate, yes, he was a part of this entire day, but unfortunately, the only picture I got was of him doing what he loves to do at Chuck E. Cheese, the basketball game. He also loves the football game and got TONS of tickets by being the high scorer several times! He's just a big ole' kid.

I must say that in my pregnancy induced impatience, I was VERY unimpressed with the customer service at this Chuck E. Cheese. We waited a long time for tokens and then an even longer time for prizes. But the kids didn't seem to mind.

So we finally got the kids home almost 2 hours later than originally planned (again I was feeling so happy that we did a small party and there were only 2 moms to call with updates on our delays).

The fun did not stop there. Next, Nate and Harrison went on our church's Fathers and Sons Campout! Harrison was very excited (or "exciting" as he says) to go camping with his Dad. I thought it was the perfect way to end his 5th birthday!

When I asked him what he had for dinner, he said marshmallows. Nate says he also had Udon noodles at a restaurant on the way up, but apparently that wasn't nearly as memorable.

Here are he and Logan outside of Logan's tent. Notice Harrison still has his Ben 10 Alien Maker! Nate and Harrison slept in the back of our Pilot. I wish they had taken a picture of that!

Here are the three musketeers together again!

It's so great to see little boys doing what little boys are meant to do -- play outside, get dirty, and climb on rocks.

Elizabeth and I missed the boys. Harrison said on his way out the door, "Mom, while I'm gone, keep thinking about how much I love you." Then when they got back and I told him how much I missed him he said, "Did you remember to think about how much I love you?" He's the sweetest little guy! The day after his birthday he also said, "Mom, can you believe that you and Dad have a 5 year old boy? That's a pretty crazy idea."

I totally agree! But man, do I love that kid!