Holy Toledo, Batman, he's 5!

Ah, November 5th...a special day for our family...the day our Oldest Kid was born!
Our big guy recently finished up his Birthday Celebration (which actually started in October while Grammy was here and went through his birthday weekend). It's crazy that our oldest is now 5--that's not a toddler anymore! Not that he has been for a while...reading, talking back, and flirting with girls has been going on for some time. He's practically a teenager!

Well, in October, he got to kick off birthday festivities with Tyler's mom (she was visiting from NJ). He did a great job sharing his new presents with his sister. Since Jack's been soooo into reading lately, he

thoroughly enjoyed his new GIANT book and read-along CD.

On his

actual birthday, we did the family stuff. Waffles for

breakfast, Mac&Cheese for lunch, and Pizza for dinner (he couldn't decide between blueberry pancakes and pizza for dinner...but I figured after waffles we needed a little somethin'

else). He finally got the

Imaginext Batcave he's been coveting for 6 months, and he spent ALL DAY playing with it. Great Grampa Larry and Great

Gramma Diane made it down in the afternoon and had cupcakes with us after his Preschool party. We were so excited to spend a little time with them--and we were even able to visit outside (it was in the 60's!). We spent all day doing the stuff he loves, but he informed me that it wasn't really his birthday. (oh no?) Nope, not until his party with his cousins!

So, Saturday was WARM AND WONDERFUL, which led to his first (and probably only!) birthday party outdoors. He's been really into dinos lately, so we made brachiosaurus hats, played T-Rex tag,

tossed dino beanbags into a volcano, and played pin the meat on the T-Rex. The friends and cousins were running around like a bunch of wild animals and had a GREAT time. The topper of it all was the dinosaur volcano cake that REALLY errupted. It was like magic! (it was pretty fun to redo this cake, since it's the same one we had on his 1st birthday!).I can't believe how quickly the past 4 years has gone (yup, 4....the first one was LONG and I wondered if we'd survive 2 months, let alone 5 years!).

We love our Axel Jack SO MUCH!!