Five!

David is five. Wow, do I love five year olds! He has been so stinking cute anticipating this birthday. The celebration is a bit spread out between friends and family, so I had to draw him a chart of what was happening on which days this week so he wouldn't be disappointed to get no cake or gifts on his actual birthday. But even before any cake or gifts, he proclaimed yesterday evening that this was "the best birthday EVER!" What else can a mom possibly want to hear?

I cheated the system a bit. I had told him that he could invite a couple of friends to go somewhere fun - he chose the bounce house. He also chose 3 friends, who are conveniently the children of some of our closest friends, which works out great. They also have siblings that are great playmates for my other children, so before you know it, it's a bigger party than you intended. However...we found a groupon for pizza and bounce during their open bounce time, which we were able to buy for all 4 families (including ours) for less than a third of the price of having a party there. When I called to schedule the 4 families to come at the same time, the lady warned me in a stern voice that we canNOT have a birthday party during open bounce. No gifts, no singing, no cake. Luckily my friends are good sports and we all had a laugh about whispering "Happy Birthday" while we ate pizza. And they all followed me to McDonald's afterward to have an ice cream cone and sing Happy Birthday as loudly as we wanted. Like I said: great friends.

It was a long day while Daddy was at work, waiting for 5pm to arrive. We went to Sonic for the first time (the only place I can imagine taking the kids "out to eat" by myself), and he LOVED it.

Oh my. Unsupervised 2-year old eats lunch in back seat of van while mother eats optimistically in the driver's seat. (and he is the one who buckled that chest strap to sit and eat - hilarious)

Time to bounce! David and his friend Buddy take a slide. David was so red-faced and sweaty the whole time.

Katy had a blast bouncing all over the place with Buddy's sisters, Elizabeth and Reagan.

Once Landon warmed up - he was a bouncing maniac!

Ta-da!!

These 3 boys (David, Buddy, and Frank) would NOT stop moving so I could take a picture of them. Had to catch them as they piled up at the bottom of the slide.

The girls, smiling politely.

The boys. Being boys (so nice to be somewhere you can let them just be boys).

The groupon came with game tokens, too. Landon loves anything to do with basketball!

Taking up the whole bar at McDonald's. Singing LOUDLY. :)

My mom came and got Anna and took her home, which was an amazing help. It's still not sinking in how awesome it will be to have grandparents in town.

David got some new Lego sets, and I was blown away at how well he put them together - just following the picture instructions with very little help from me. And THEN he spent 45 minutes diligently writing "Thank you" notes. I guess he is really living up to being five? Hard to believe...

Cake and presents with family coming up...