On Friday my little man turned 5! I really can’t believe it! Some days I forget how big he is getting because I still think of him as my little boy. Some days I just love him so much and other days I still love him but it is much harder ;) He is such a sweet, sensitive little boy which is usually good but if something goes wrong he can totally flip out (it’s the Lester side of him). He is super helpful, smart, intuitive, and completely stubborn (he might get that from me). He is an awesome hugger, an amazing big brother, definitely not a morning person (that’s probably from me too), and I wouldn’t change any of him for the whole world.

For his birthday we were thinking of going down to St George to go to the big indoor aquatic center they have but it didn’t open until one and Jake had to be back before five for pep band so we decided to just stick around here.  After Ethan went to bed the night before his birthday we got some balloons and tied them to one of his presents and set it at the bottom of the stairs so he would see it as soon as he woke up.  Well he came running down the stairs and straight in to tell us that it was his birthday.  He didn’t even stop to look at the balloon or the present. I don’t know if he didn’t notice them or if he was just so excited to remind us of his birthday that he didn’t care.  After he talked to us for a minute he went back out and got the balloons and present. Being the great big brother he is, and knowing his little sister would want a balloon he untied all the balloons (there were 1 mylar and 2 regular) then gave both of the regular balloons to Olivia and just kept the mylar one for himself because it was red and red is his favorite color.

He opened the present and it was Phineas and Ferb walkie-talkies. Of course he immediately had to try them out and they were great. He loved them and they were super kid friendly, not a lot of buttons to mess with, just one knob to turn it on/off  and one button to talk. We let him choose whatever he wanted for breakfast and surprisingly he chose pancakes. It’s surprising because usually if you give him a choice he will choose cold cereal every time. He decided that since it was his birthday he wanted a birthday cake shaped pancake so Jake gave it a shot. While he was waiting for breakfast to get made I decided to let him open another present. The one he chose to open turned out to be the camera attachment for his Leapster Explorer. (Side note: One of the reasons I chose the explorer over the other video games available was because they had just come out with this new camera/video recorder attachment. Ethan has been wanting a camera of his own for awhile but I didn’t want to get him a real camera and all the “kid-tough” type cameras were over $50. This leapster camera attachment was only $20! It does photos, videos, and came with editing tools, games etc that you can use with your photos. Definitely a must for anyone with a leapster explorer)

He wandered around taking pictures of everything he could find! Jake, Olivia, me, the dog, his balloons, our Christmas tree in the backyard. Literally everything he could find. Then I showed him the different editing tools that came with the camera and of course he had to play with those too.  Finally we made him sit down and but he couldn’t eat until he had taken a picture of his pancake using his new camera.

He didn’t like the cakes shape at first because he said he didn’t want it to look like it was on a plate so he cut off the two sides at the bottom so that it was just a square cake with candles. Not that it really mattered because he immediately poured syrup all over it and cut it up so it was just a bunch of pancakes pieces but whatever. After breakfast we let him open another present and it was a wii mini golf game so he and Jake had to go try it out. They played for a little bit while I tried to get some work done and then we headed over to caliente to play at Ethan’s favorite park.

It has I think 6 or 7 slides (Ethan’s favorite), various tunnel areas, a little rock wall, and tons of stuff to climb on and play with. It’s the same park we usually stop at for 10-15 minutes whenever we have to run to Calienete and the same one where the kids played in the leaves. We decided we would play there for as long as Ethan wanted and then go get some lunch at his favorite place to eat out “the ice cream place” which is really a local fast food place that we stop at sometimes to get ice cream cones (hence it’s nickname). Olivia fell asleep on the way to Caliente so Jake and I actually got to spend almost an hour just playing around with Ethan which is pretty rare and something I think he really enjoyed (Olivia slept in the car just off the right side of this picture).

There were a couple of spots on the playground that still had a little ice on them because they were constantly shaded and Ethan found a piece of on one of the slides and of course had to eat. Gross! Olivia finally woke up and she came out to play for a little while and had a great time climbing around chasing Ethan, going down the slides with her big brother, and just getting to play outside. 

Eventually we all decided we were hungry and headed out to eat but Ethan said that was the funnest time he ever had at a park.

After lunch we went home to have cake and open presents. When I asked him if he wanted cake or cupcakes he told me he didn’t want either, he wanted cheesecake.

Like mother like son I guess! He blew out the candle and then got down to the business of opening presents.

Everyone was way too generous of course and he got way too many presents but he was so excited about all of them and kept saying,”Thank you to them! I love this gift!”

And of course he was very free with the hugs after he opened his presents.

What am I going to do when my little bug grows up?

January 7, 2006

January 7, 2007

January 7, 2008

January 7, 2009

January 7, 2010

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