Soren's Fifth Birthday

I can't believe it has been 5 years since Soren was born!  I remember the hospital staff wheeling him into my room, clean and beautiful, small enough to fit into a Christmas stocking.  Sometimes it seemed like he would never be big enough to do anything and now it feels like he has grown up in the blink of an eye.

This is what we did to celebrate his big day:

1. My brother and sister came up from Provo to play with the kids all day.  The boys *love* their aunts and uncles, who have loads of energy and enjoy raucous games.  So that was a special treat.

2. The first thing that Soren did when he woke up was make an invitation for his neighbor, Ethan, to come to a birthday party.  I had not planned on inviting any kids over for cake because I thought Soren preferred adult company.  But I guess he knows that birthdays mean having other kids over so he took some initiative.  He wrote the invitation and delivered it all by himself, inviting Ethan (who is 3) over for cake at 6 o'clock that night.  He decorated the invite with Ethan's favorite Thomas the Tank Engine trains.

3. We went to library storytime.  Soren decided a few months ago that he doesn't like to go to storytime so he browsed while Carl attended.  One of the stories they told was a puppet show of the gingerbread man and after storytime, all the kids could decorate their own gingerbread men.  Well, of course, Soren was interested in that.  He meticulously frosted and decorated his cookie and then ate it all.

4. When Paul, the librarian, found out that it was Soren's birthday, he gave him a new book called Weird but True.  It is a book of random facts and Soren spent a few hours in the afternoon reading it.  He periodically told me cool things from it like: African elephants have ears shaped like the continent of Africa.

5. When Scott got home from school, Soren opened his birthday presents.  Scott and I got him a piggy bank and told him that he would start getting an allowance now that he is 5 years old.  He was pretty excited about that.

6. Nan and Poppy got him a new movie (Brave) and Grandma and Grandpa got him a K'nex set.  We also used some of the money he got from his great-grandparents to buy him a new game called Animal Upon Animal.

7. He played with K'nex for the rest of the afternoon while I made his special birthday dinner.  He had requested spaghetti and meatballs as well as a "train cake".  The spaghetti and meatballs was easy but the train cake required a little creativity.  I think it turned out great in the end, though.

8.  Brother and Sister Lanier, his primary teachers, came for dinner.  Soren loves Brother Lanier more than any other person outside his family, so that was really special.  Sister Lanier is 9 months pregnant, so we weren't sure they would be able to make it.  When they showed up at our door, Soren was so excited and surprised!  He was jumping around like crazy and hugging them both in what I'm sure was a rather obnoxious way.  But it was really sweet.

9.  After dinner, Ethan came over for the cake which you can see in the picture.  In addition to the cake with candles, we had lots of other mini-cakes that the kids decorated with frosting and candies.

10.  Before bedtime, I told Soren a story about himself.  I told him about how he was born on a cold winter day in December 5 years ago and that the nurses wrapped him up in a stocking.  When he was 1, he learned to walk and talk and among the first words he learned were the letters of the alphabet.  When he was 2, he first started to draw and he has loved to make artwork ever since.   When he was 3, he taught himself to read.  When he was 4, he was in Brother Lanier's primary class and he learned to be kind and cheerful.  And at the end of the story, I told him that I was excited to see what he did now that he was 5 years old.  Which is true.