And no, that’s not our anniversary (we celebrated 10 years last July). Milo turned 5 this week.
All you encouraging parents that say it only gets harder as they get older, Shush. I don’t want to hear it.
I’m not sure how, but somehow we managed to avoid the full-blown kiddie birthday party until this year. The five-year-old party invitations from classmates started to come hot and heavy some time last winter and we realized that at long last it was unavoidable. We booked Playcentre for the big day, and prepared to go all out. Well, “all out” is a relative term. I stopped short of the goodie bags filled with junk plastic toys and candy, but we did invite the full contingent of littlies. Here they are, ready to run through the obstacle course.
We had cake–albeit a small one–I missed grabbing a shot of the rest of the junk food, but it took us every evening the week before to create. Chocolate covered pretzels with sprinkles. Chocolate cupcakes with sprinkles. Chocolate covered marshmallows with sprinkles. Chocolate covered chocolate with sprinkles… Just kidding on that last one; they were chocolate covered cookies with M&M wheels and gummy bear drivers. Suffice it to say that we did our part to keep the sugar growers in business.
We dug for treasure in the sandbox, and Jeremiah applied “washable” pirate tattoos, which ended up being remarkably long-lasting (we’re on week 2 for ours).
We pelted water balloons at the target in the fort….
Jeremiah was the target!
We opened five year old dream-presents, including a water gun….
….which we squirted!
We crashed down dozens of giant block towers, bowling them over at high bike speed.
We reveled in our fierceness.
Bike riding is even more fun with a balloon atop the helmet! And THANK YOU to our friends who stayed with their kids and helped us run the show–you were brilliant!
“You’re Not Coming to My Birthday Party!” shouted Milo later this week. I forget what the offence was, but in his opinion it deserved the full measure of his 5-year-old wrath, and he pulled out the big-guns retort. I laughed, thinking of all the parental effort that goes into a kid’s birthday party. “Milo, if parents don’t come to the party, there IS NO PARTY.” He scowled. That reality is still lost on him.
Give It A Burl 
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MILO! 5 WOW! Seems like yesterday when we were welcoming you into the world. It looks like you had a GREAT day!
Happy birthday Milo!
That looked like a great party! Good job Mom and Dad Shaw.
That looked like a wonderful time! Made me wish to be 5 and Milo’s friend. I’d forgotten he shares a birthday with our guys who turned 26…they’d have loved that kind of party last week. Their toys get more pricey but they don’t ever get tired of water balloons. 🙂 Well done!
What a wonderful party; makes me want to be 5 again… but only for the parties! Milo is so blessed to have such wonderful, loving, caring parents.