Being 5

It’s sad how unprepared I was for his birthday.  But BIG thanks to my big sis for saving the day by having an extra big-boy bike on hand!  And kudos to Bob for figuring out how to get it all rigged up just in time for Zack to ride it for the 10 minutes of light we had left of the day.

Technically, we celebrated a day early, so I’ll say that’s why I wasn’t prepared <wink>.
Because of my lack of party-organization skills, I jumped on my neighbor’s offer to make cupcakes for Zack’s birthday.  She can sure make a yummy cupcake and she couldn’t have been more accommodating of Zack’s requests (which changed by the minute as he flipped through her Hello Cupcake! cookbook).  And even though I was trying really hard subtly to convince him he wanted the penguin cupcakes, he held strong as soon as he spotted the sports ball cupcakes in another book.


Since we’d had his “party” the day before his actual birthday, I somehow forgot to make any real plans to celebrate the first day of being the big 5.  Luckily it was a school day and he got to take his birthday poster to school with several pictures from each year of his life thus far.  They do a little “Walk Around the Sun” celebration in class and his teacher reads some things I wrote down about Zack during each year (Baby Zack was so chubby…Zack became a big brother…Zack loves to ride his bike…Zack got to go to Hawaii…)

Here’s a little sampling of his poster pics:

 

 

 

  

 

Celebrating his first day of being 5 was mostly just that, “Today I am 5!”  And that was pretty exciting to say in and of itself.  I think my (and Zachary’s) favorite part of the day was when I kept finding presents tucked away for this day.  I forgot I’d hidden the one from Grandma in my sewing room.  We found a package from Auntie Lisa on the doorstep.  I also happened to be looking through my purse and found the tickets for the play we were going to see the next night with all the cousins, so I handed them to him.  He figured out what they were and then asked me, “Why are there so many tickets?!”  And I got to tell him he was going with lots of cousins, which he was pretty excited about.  Whew, thanks cousins!
Karla dropped off Savannah to babysit Braxton and then drove us (Julie, Zack, Tatum, Booker) over to the Scera where we met up with all the other cousins that came (Lesa, Emily, Eliza, Michelle, Lauren, Brooklynn, McKenna).  The play was funny and Zack loved it so much that when the curtain came down after it was over he said, "I want to see another one!"  A success, I think.

 

We stood in line to meet Boy and Mouse, where they signed Zack's copy of the book.  He was a little nervous about talking to them, I'm not sure why.  But at least he smiled while I took his picture with them (which somehow got completely washed out, grrr).  Thanks cousins, for making this birthday a memorable one despite my non-efforts!

 

My baby is 5.  Weird.  But only because he looks so grown up in his school picture (he’s actually only 4 1/2 in it).  He still looks like his 2-year-old picture to me when I look at him every day and it seriously feels like he was born not that long ago - sigh.

Happy Birthday Baby!