Happy Birthday, Elias!

Elias’ 5th birthday is almost here! On Wednesday, my firstborn will turn 5 years old. Today we got to celebrate with family.

It is our family tradition to let the birthday person choose a restaurant. Elias chose Spaghetti Factory. We met our family and ate a yummy dinner. Then we all came back to our house to have the party.

Elias is very enamored with his cousin, James right now. He played with him at the restaurant, and at home too. I enjoy watching their cousin bonding, and also take it as a good sign for his little brother coming in just 9 short weeks!

Every year we make each of the boys a slideshow on their birthday. It has 10-15 pictures and 1 or 2 videos of them from each month of the year. We force our family to sit and watch it. The boys enjoy watching them all year long. I’m not sure how long this tradition will last, but I hope it lasts until they graduate high school!

When the video was finished, Elias got to open his presents. He was very excited, but I was impressed at how kind he was in letting Simon open as many as he wanted (or as many as he could get his hands on).

After opening presents, Elias played with a bunch of different games that he received. Here is a picture of family slap jack. Things got a little competitive between Daddy and Ama. Neither of them made any concessions for the younger players in the game. Elias decided to stay out of the fray after awhile. I’m sure it will lead to a lot of family fun…especially after Elias is able to actually figure out when he is supposed to slap the pile!

Then we sung happy birthday!

When I asked Elias what kind of dessert he wanted, he was very specific! He said he wanted white chocolate cupcakes with mint. Unfortunately, Winco did not have anything remotely resembling white chocolate or mint in the cupcake mix section, and I did not have the time to make anything from scratch or go to any other stores. So I bought chocolate fudge mix with white frosting (white chocolate), and topped them with Andes mints. Do I get points for creativity?

Elias was satisfied so that is all that matters!

Simon was too!

The party went until 8pm or so…only a little after their bed time. They were both very tired, though. Simon had a meltdown at the end, and Elias was asleep before I even finished our evening prayer. That has never happened before! I guess they both had a lot of fun. Thank you to all of our family who made it to help us celebrate and helped Elias to feel special!