Henry Is Five!

Henry is five! This has by far been my most favorite birthday celebration for Henry ever. Maybe that is because he is old enough to recognize the amount of work that goes into making a good birthday and kept saying "Thank you" and "I'm having a great day!" Nothing like a little appreciation to keep a mother ticking.

Also, Bridget and Emmett are definetely old enough to be jealous of the attention on a birthday but they were wonderful. They didn't wine or cry for things, they clapped for Henry, sang to him and were just generally as good as solid gold.

And, even though we are far away from family and friends we had so many calls, well-wishes, gifts and cards from everyone that the day was quite simply as complete as it could be!

What time is it? Birthday time! Grandma and DK sent Henry a watch for his birthday. Absolutely adorable!

His asked that his birthday cake look like his favorite stuffed animal "Mow." As anyone who knows Mow can attest, this cake is the ideal of Mow. This is what Mow used to look like before Henry lovingly pulled off his whiskers, rubbed his nose and mouth down to nothing and took him all over Chicago until he was the same color as city snow.
"Thank you for a great birthday Daddy!" Ahhhhhh......
Brian and Jorge always send thoughtful gifts but this year they hit a grand-slam home run. A Star Wars lunch box with themed sandwich cutters inside. He is going to be the hit of lunch bunch on Wednesday. They also made him Star Wars sugar cookies and sent the icing and we had a great time icing the cookies and eating them.
Here is Bridget with her Yoda cookie.
Making Darth Vadar red. I'm going to go with "mad red" instead of "bleeding Darth" which is what I think she was doing.
How adorable are these cookies!?!?! And they were (of course) freakin' delicious.
Breakfast with a candle. Always good to practice for the big wish-making that night.
Cupcakes for Henry's school. They were the mini version and 9 of them fell into my mouth.
Henry, Emmett and Ben at dinner. Henry picked Red Lobster for his birthday dinner and ate his body weight in crab legs.
The three of them on their way out of Chuck-E-Cheese. Man, I seriously love Chuck-E-Cheese. We went right when they opened, spent $25 for tokens, played for an hour and a half in a totally empty place and then headed somewhere else for food. Next time we might need to buy more tokens since Ben and I hogged them just a little.
A whole hand of fingers! My little guy is 5. I love it.
AH! This birthday was minute to minute excitement.

Every year when I lay my kids down to bed on their birthday I think about how thankful I am that we had another year without serious illness or tragedy. I don't want to say that we survived another year so much as we successfully navigated another year together and mother and child. With the move and starting not one but two new schools this has been a dramatic but very successful year and I was so happy and thankful to tuck a wonderful little boy into bed tonight.