Noah turns 5!!

Wednesday July 1st

This handsome guy turned 5 years old today!!  Today, we just had a family party and opened presents because we had family coming in today.  Last night actually.  Savann and her family flew in the night before and Josh and his family were coming to Oregon in a couple of days.  They were here to spend the 4th of July with us. So we planned to have a friend party with his cousins after they all arrived.  

 He was so excited about all his presents that we let him open one in the morning.  Usually, we wait until the evening to open presents.  

 Noah is totally into Ninjago right now, so we decorated a little bit with Ninjago characters.  Kai, the red one is his favorite because he loves the color red.  

 I wanted to take a picture of Noah as a Ninja, so I put him in a black shirt and wrapped some black leggings around his head and strapped a sword onto his back and took a picture.  Trying to get a picture of him without him smiling was pretty hard.  He wanted to smile and giggle because he thought this was pretty fun.  

Then I used some program on my computer to change the background and make it look cooler.  I thought it looked cool!

Opening presents

The whole gang

He got some fun toys and a new bike!!  His other one didn't have any pedals and he was getting to be a pro on it, so we thought he should try with pedals now.  

Alex and Bella hanging out in the hammock

He wanted a chocolate cake and Maggie wanted to bake it for him. Score!

Eating cake outside

Monday July 6th

For months, Noah's been wanting to go to Out of this World Pizza for his birthday party.  Sounded good to me since I didn't have to plan anything.  

He invited his friends Cooper, Eli, Ethan and Trevor.  Then he had his cousins Caleb, Luke, Hannah and Devon there, too.  Plus his sisters.  I think they had a blast!

 He was a little scared of the pictures on this ride/game, so he closed his eyes.  

 Cake and ice cream time!  I just bought some chocolate cup cakes at the store and the ice cream was included in the party package...score!

 It was Trevor's birthday that day too, so we sang to both of them.

The adults and Lydia hanging out.  Lydia was a bit bored.

 Noah and his buddies

 Devon

Meanwhile, Alex and Savann took their girls Alyssa and Sydney and Maggie to Powell's book store in Portland.  All 3 of them are the biggest book lovers, so they were all in heaven!  

 It's too bad these pictures are blurry because they are so fun.  Maggie and uncle Alex

 So many books!!

 Finally made some decisions and purchases!

 Then they found a place to eat lunch.

Here's Noah's annual questionnaire:

1.  What is your favorite color?  red

2.  What is your favorite toy?  planes, monster trucks, cars

3.  What is your favorite fruit?  watermelon, cantaloupe, strawberries, raspberries

4.  What is your favorite TV show?  Ninjago and Chima

5.  What is your favorite movie?  Cars 1 and 2

6.  What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch?  lunchables

7.  What is your favorite outfit?  new striped shirt and brown shorts

8.  What is your favorite game?  Paw patrol board game

9.  What is your favorite animal?  Wolves and lions

10.  What is your favorite snack?  BBQ corn nuts

11.  What is your favorite song?  "Life is a Highway" from Cars

12.  Who is your best friend(s)?  Cooper Jensen, Ethan Brown, Eli Robison

13.  What is your favorite book?  Doesn't have a favorite

14.  What is your favorite cereal?  Krave

15.  What is your favorite thing to do outside?  swing and slide

16.  What is your favorite drink?  apple juice

17.  What is your favorite holiday?  Christmas, Halloween and Easter

18.  What do you like to sleep with at night?  blanky, pillow

19.  What's your favorite thing for dinner?  doesn't know (He's super picky!)

20.  What do you want to be when you grow up?  the Red Ninja

21.  What food do you NOT like?  everything

22.  What is something I do well?  playing, giving hugs

23.  What is something that you need to practice?  writing my name, riding my new bike with pedals

24.  Where is your favorite place to go?  Out of this world pizza

25.  My favorite family activities are:  Family Home evening

26.  What is your favorite thing about home?  his bed

27.  What is your favorite chore?  dishes

28.  What is your favorite part of the day?  watching TV in the morning 

Oh baby!

Bella is 5!!  Holy cow!

Bella loves her baby dolls and is always playing "mom and kid".  So when I was starting to plan her party for this year, the theme I wanted to do was fairly obvious.  She was super excited when I asked if that was what she wanted.  

This was the invitation that I made.  I copied the text from another invitation that I found online.  I'm not very creative when it comes to writing.  We invited 6 kids and they were all able to come!  

Our beginning activity was coloring little paper dolls using stickers and crayons and I also had little foamie paper dolls and clothes.  They really enjoyed creating these little people and each made 3 or 4 paper dolls.  They spent a lot of time here.  While they were doing this, I took their pictures with their baby dolls (or bear--in David's case) in front of the baby doll banner in front of the fire place.  (Like the first picture of Bella at the top of the post).  

Our next activity was a relay race outside, since we had beautiful, hot weather.  It was meant to be a race, but some of the girls wanted to take their time and do everything right.  It was cute.  They each wanted to do it at least twice, sometimes 3 times.  Bella and David didn't want to participate for some reason.  They sat and watched the other kids have fun.  

They had to put on an apron, put a diaper on a baby, wrap the baby in a blanket, put the baby in the stroller and put the diaper bag on their shoulder and then run/walk/stroll the baby to the slide and then back to the next person and take everything off.  

 Our next activity was just playing dolls or "mom and kid" as Bella likes to call it.  This is what I was hoping would take up the majority of the party.  I had different stations set up upstairs that they could go to and play in.  The first one was the doctor's office.  In here, they were able to weigh their babies and get an official birth certificate. 

 The weigh-in and birth certificate area.  Maggie and Lydia helped out here.  

 Bella and her baby

I was in another corner of the room making felt diapers for the babies.  I wanted to have this done before the party started, but realized that everyone was going to have different sized babies, so I had to wait till they got there.  It took awhile and I don't think everyone waited around to get their diapers.  Oh well.  

I also handed out diaper bags (as their goody bags) here and a small "receiving" blanket that I made for each of them.  

 Then, I had an area with a doctor kit where Dr. Paige examined their babies for them.  I didn't get a picture of Paige actually doing it, since I was making diapers, but she had on scrubs and everything.  It was pretty cute.  They all came back to this station later to give their babies a check-up, themselves.  

 The next area was "their house".  

 There was a dressing area...

 a bathing area

 they could brush their babies teeth and comb it's hair, cut it's fingernails, etc.  

and a feeding/kitchen area.  (And a few beds off to the left side there.)

We brought the car in from the garage, so they could drive to their different places.  

 There was a reading corner where they could read books to their babies.  

The most popular station though, was the grocery store.  

 We set out all of our fake food and some toys around my bedroom.  We gave them each some fake money.  Maggie was the cashier.  I felt bad that I only had one shopping cart, but I provided a couple of baskets for them to use, too.  It was kind of funny to watch them try to juggle everything with their diaper bags, holding their babies, and the baskets, trying to put stuff in their carts, etc.  One girl was trying to push a stroller with her baby in it and push a shopping cart with all her stuff.  I had to giggle.  Motherhood is so like that.  

They probably could've continued playing for another hour at least, but time was running short and we still hadn't had cake or opened presents.  So we had everyone come downstairs to have cake and ice cream.  

 I wanted to make a cake like those barbie doll cakes with a real barbie sticking out of the cake and her dress is actually the cake.  But, I wanted to put a baby doll in the cake.  I couldn't find one that worked, so I found this cake online instead.  The face turned out a little dark, but other than that I thought it was a cute sleeping baby.  There's pink smears on it because at first I tried to make flowers on the blanket, but that didn't work out, so I tried to get it off and that didn't work, so I tried to mix it in with the white, but I didn't have enough extra white.  Oh well.  

 Then it was present time.

 Group picture

 Miraculously, we still had about 15 minutes left of the 2 1/2 hour party.  So, they all wanted to go outside and play.  

Bella had a fun time and I'm really glad that all of her cute little friends could come.  

For the past couple of years, I've been doing something that my sister Megan does for her kid's birthdays.  She interviews them each year and asks them the same questions. It's really cute to read their answers, so I thought I'd post Bella's answers.  (Megs--I stole all your questions, I hope you don't mind.)  :)

What is your favorite color?  Yellow (of course, it's been that way since she was 3.)

What is your favorite toy?  Baby doll

What is your favorite fruit?  strawberries (really any fruit)

What is your favorite TV show?  Strawberry shortcake

What is your favorite movie?  She said Barbie movie--A Mermaid Tale, but I know she really likes "Dolphin Tale".  She used to watch that movie ALL the time.  

What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch?  Bagel with cream cheese and turkey

What is your favorite outfit?  She said shorts and shirt, but she really loves wearing skirts.

What is your favorite game?  Mom and kid

What is your favorite animal? Giraffe

What is your favorite snack?  fruit snacks

What is your favorite song?  Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star

Who is your best friend?  David Nelson

What is your favorite book?  Brown Bear Brown bear

What is your favorite cereal?  Strawberry yogurt cheerios

What is your favorite thing to do outside?  Play on the swing

What is your favorite drink?  chocolate milk

What is your favorite holiday?  Christmas

What do you like to sleep with at night?  baby doll and pink and green blanket

What is your favorite thing for dinner?  cereal

What do you want to be when you grown up?  a zookeeper (that one surprised me a little bit.  I've never heard her say that before. )

Anyways, it was cute to hear her answers.  She is such a doll.  She is so sweet and helpful.  She is always helping Noah with something.  She's very creative and is always drawing or creating some kind of masterpiece.  She's come a long way from when she was younger.  She would hardly show any emotion to anyone--no mater what they did to get her to smile, she was very serious.  But now, she's a pretty silly little girl.  When she gets laughing, you can tell it's genuine happiness.  I love this girl so much.  I can't believe she's 5 and will be going off to kindergarten in the fall.  What am I going to do without her around?