Birthdays!

This year West turned 5!  It was so exciting for him.  Such fun things happen when you turn five, he just knows it!  And who am I to discourage that?  All of a sudden he can do things like use a real plate, and cut his own meat, and set the table without any help from his mama.  This is all super exciting for me as well.  I am not one of those mothers that wants to keep them babies, or even young; I want them to grow up and become who they are going to be and go out into the world and see what they can see!  And every once in awhile come home.  But first before all of that can happen we get to do things like learn how to use a sharp knife because it really is so much easier to cut up your piece of meat with a real knife rather than one of the plastic ones he has been using for years now (or so he says).  We also get to celebrate every year of his life once a year with the whole day dedicated to just him!  In fact, this year we got to celebrate it twice!  The Rooster of course was not going to be here for his actual birthday so we discussed it with West (another joy of getting older) and he decided he really wanted to celebrate on his actual birthday but he would miss his Daddy not being there for it.  To remedy this we thought maybe we could all go eat out someone special with Daddy.

So we did some coloring

And a bit of waiting

and some fooling around

and finally some eating (he wanted cake and ice cream but all they had was pie!)

And then he discovered his Daddy really was the best guy out there when he opened his present from him and it was this amazing thing!

And then a few days later he woke up and it was really his birthday and this was the DAY!  He was ready to turn 5 and the day was finally upon him!
He woke early of course as this is his normal routine but then had to wait for brunch.  The wait, however, was worth it!

We had pancakes and bacon (his favorite) and then of course sausage for his mama and Aunt.  (Thanks Uncle Todd for cooking the greasy stuff for us).
Then it was time to get ready for the rest of the party to show up.  This of course involved frosting the cake!

Which he deemed himself old enough to do!  And what kind of a birthday party would it be without a few candles to blow out and a few presents to open?

All-in-all it was a good time had by all and I now a 5 year old boy who points out to everyone he talks to that he is 5 and he might be big enough for that!