Crane Corner

Last Sunday was William's 5th birthday.  I can't believe he's that old!  How did that happen?!  He was so excited for his birthday this year.  He loved that he got a special sticker and crown at school.

He thought it was fun to help me make these lollipop cookies and bring them for snacktime.

But he was most excited that he got to have a birthday party.  I debated on whether or not to throw him one but eventually decided to do it.  He was allowed to invite 5 friends... because he was turning 5. We ended up with 4 friends plus William and James.  It was a perfect number.  (I don't think I could have handled many more!)  We went with a dinosaur theme.  It was lots of fun!  We started off with a game of pin-the-tooth-in-the-dinosaurs-mouth.  It was hilarious to see how funny they thought it was.  We then found some "dinosaur eggs" (balloons) and had to "hatch" them to find our baby dinosaurs.  This was by far the most entertaining for me and Rich--and the boys had a great time too!  This was William's favorite part of the party.  Once all the balloons were popped we moved on to "sharp-tooth, sharp-tooth, pterydactyl" (duck, duck, goose).  I think they would have been happy to play that for the rest of the party.  After the presents were opened and we had devoured our cake and icecream the plan was to pull out the playdough and googly eyes so that they could make their own dinosaurs until their parents came to get them.  It wasn't the hit that I thought it would be so we only did that for a few minutes before letting them run around and check out the new toys.  Most importantly, William had a fantastic time!

Since the party was on Saturday we got to party for the whole weekend.  William had a delicious breakfast of french toast bread pudding.  After church he opened more presents and opened even more when we got to Grandma and Grandpa's house.

William has decided to do a lot of things now that he is five.  He no longer needs to have his sippy cup at church or in the morning.  He can walk into school by himself (as long as I cross the crosswalk with him).  He even got up and sat on the stand for the primary program and said his part into the microphone (a huge step for our boy with major stage-fright).  We are so proud of the wonderful boy that he is!  Happy Birthday William!