Portrait of Five

Holden's biggest birthday wish was to be "The Boss" on his birthday.  Possibly because we have frequent and lengthy conversations about who is in charge at our house, and he always seems genuinely surprised that it isn't him. But I'm nothing if not a sucker for the birthday boy so we did our best to accommodate.  

After setting a few ground rules (no illegal activity, we can't go to Lagoon when it's not open, etc.) here is how my 5 year old chose to spend his big day.

He wanted to make sure we spent the whole day celebrating, so we decorated his door for a little first thing in the morning surprise.

Of course, presents were next on the agenda.

Then he chose "one of those sandwiches made out of pancakes" (gag) at McDonald's for breakfast, along with a lengthy stay at the PlayPlace.

Our attempt at a homemade pinata was a big fat fail, so we improvised with a last minute birthday treasure hunt for the intended pinata candy.

After that, he spent some time playing with his new birthday loot.

Then it was off to preschool, complete with the world's most ghetto birthday treat to share with his class.

He seemed to celebrate hard at preschool also, judging by his hat, sticker and treat bag.

That's the best photo I could get.  His mind was clearly on other things.  Because after preschool we headed to Boondocks Fun Center.

He threw around all sorts of activity ideas, but when it came down to it, all he really wanted was to spend all his time and money at the arcade, which surprised no one.  That kid loves arcades.

And the prizes that come with it.

All that arcad-ing made the birthday boy hungry, so we headed off to Noodles and Company for some spaghetti and meatballs...What's that you say?  That's not meatballs?  That's because when his food came he didn't know they were going to use "that kind of spaghetti" (you know, the spaghetti noodle kind) and asked for Mac and Cheese instead.  I had been trying to tell him he wanted Mac and Cheese the whole time, so I was about to tell him tough luck, but lucky for him, Dad had pity on the birthday boy and traded him meals.

Finally, it was back home for cake.

And a Holden's choice Redbox. (Monster House if you were wondering).

His last decision of the day was to stay up late, so he got an 8:30 bedtime.  We live dangerously around here.
We'd go broke quickly if Holden was the boss every day, but it was nice to have this day to document what goes on in his little 5 year old brain.

Revenge Of The Fifth

Can I count my kid's birthdays as my favorite holiday?  Because if so, I am totally doing it.  Holden asked for a Star Wars party this year, which was easy peasy other than the fact that I haven't ever actually SEEN a Star Wars movie, nor did I intend to, even for birthday party research purposes. But with the help of my BFF Pinterest, and my assistant party planner Holden, I feel like we got the job done.

We decorated:

We only remembered to take photos of about half our guests, as usual.  Also, don't mind Harper's grumpy face.  She wasn't feeling great that day.  Or she had a bitter case of birthday envy:

We ate our Star Wars themed dinner:

And played my new favorite go to party game.  Seriously, I want to have more parties just so I can play this game. Who'd come?

I baked my little heart out for our Wookie Cookie party favors:

All that baking wore me out and  inspired me to take a year off from my annual cake fail.  We ordered a plain cake from Costco instead and Holden and I "decorated" it together.  That ended up being one of my favorite parts of his birthday festivities, so maybe I'll stick with that plan from here on out:

Holden's favorite part was probably opening the presents.  He is five, after all.

All in all it was probably one of my favorite parties to date. Crazy October schedules caused us to have the party a week early, so we got to spread the birthday fun out even longer than normal.  A breakdown of the actual big day is on it's way.