Feliz Cumpleanos a Ethan

In Spanish, Happy Birthday literally means "Happy Complete-a-year". Ethan turned 5 yesterday and had just about the best birthday any 5 year old could ask for. Taylor's family always opened birthday presents first thing in the morning (like Christmas morning) so he wanted us to do the same. I'm only slightly opposed to that because I don't really want to have my picture taken sans makeup 6 times throughout the year instead of just on Christmas morning. And this year I wasn't quite ready with all the presents since I couldn't shop over the weekend while Taylor was gone. So Ethan got to open presents twice and didn't seem to mind.
Love his bed hair!
Ethan made out like a bandit. His uncle Mack sent really nice, expensive Leapfrog toys a few weeks ago that his girlfriend got for free at her PR firm in NYC. Awesome! This puzzle goes to a "magic" pen called Tag that reads books and plays games with special books. Sam sent the Tag pen thing, a book, a puzzle, and singing maracas.
Ethan is at school for the first time so he got to bring treats to share with his classmates for the first time. He requested "piggy" cookies since he loved making them last year for Kristina. These two wouldn't even look at me let alone smile they were so focused on begging to eat one themselves.
After school Ethan got picked up by his dad and Grandpa who left work early to take him to lunch wherever he wanted. In true Woodbury fashion, he picked McDonald's. After naps we ran over to Taylor's mom's school for a performance by a Japanese Taiko group. Basically really loud drums that kept Ethan and Isaac mesmerized and terrified Miles. Poor guy jumped everytime they hit a drum- which was a lot.
After that Ethan and Isaac got to play outside in the gorgeous spring weather with Oscar and then Grams brought over her presents for Ethan to open (Grandpa was at a meeting and missed this part). Last week when Sonia asked him what he wanted for his birthday he looked at her really confused. It was cute to see how innocent he was and didn't have a clue that he could "ask" for something he wanted. Not even a concept in his little brain. So we explained things, he thought for a minute and then told her he wanted a fire truck. I have no idea where that came from but you ask and Grams and Grandpa will come through in a big way. Apparently they spent an entire morning going store to store until they found just the right one. And it really is great- complete with 2 water "blobs" that shoot out of a cannon, helmets and vests for the firemen, a million doors that open and close, and lots of loud siren noises. And because Sonia remembers being a mother, she was wise enough to get an extra set of the firemen so Isaac can have his own to play with. I seriously love this thoughtful mother-in-law!
Here's our second set of presents to go with all the great presents from Mack and Sam.
And after opening all the presents we tortured these children by making them leave them all without getting to play with them to meet Taylor's dad for dinner. And since Ethan got to pick, we went to Chuck E. Cheese. Doesn't Isaac look sublimely happy?
And Ethan was too.
After pizza we headed off to the games. Isaac actually has a pretty good shot already.
Just had to include a cute picture of the boys with their Grams. She's so good with them and they love her to pieces.
And as an extra surprise Taylor's dad got Ethan a cake and had Chuck E. deliver it, light the candles, and sing.
5 candles take a while to blow out.
Normally Isaac is terrified of large animal mascots but apparently he was so hopped up on soda, pizza, and games that he forgot to be afraid.
And of course the big boys couldn't resist a little air hockey while the little boys counted tickets and picked prizes.