Happy Birthday Ben!

It's hard to believe, but our little baby boy turned five years old yesterday! Gramma and Poppop are in town and Gramma was reminding us of the stories of our little guy who had trouble being prompt (Ben was 8 days late, an eternity to a very pregnant mommy and grandparents who flew in from Maryland to welcome our tardy child) and I have to admit that it seems like yesterday that we were welcoming Baby Ben into the world. And now he's five and reading and playing video games and learning Russian to welcome his little sister home!!! Where does the time go?

Ok, enough nostalgia.

Ben had a fantastic and pretty low key fifth birthday. We started the day with the traditional Life cereal with milk (hey, if the kid is going to request cold cereal as his special birthday breakfast, who am I to argue?!?) and the ceremonial opening of the gifts. The highlights were some new Leapster games, squirt guns (can you ever have enough?), a Taters of the Lost Ark Mr. Potato Head (Sam's gift to Ben), a chocolate coin maker, and a brand new pack of bubble gum (from Mommy, who shares Ben's passion for gum). Oh, and a camera of his very own so that he stops getting fingerprints on Mommy and Daddy's camera lens! The camera is actually really cool - it has a little LCD screen and even has two eye holes for the viewfinder so that Ben can just hold it up and take a photo without having to close one eye (harder than one might think).

Here's Ben taking one of his first photos with the new camera:

And here's the result!

Needless to say, the camera has already been a source of hours of entertainment for all.

And at Ben's request the birthday evening was spent hanging out at home - we ordered pizza and while waiting for delivery drove to 7-11 to grab Slurpees. I told Ben that his love of Coke Slurpees was inevitable because when I was pregnant with him Steve, Sam, and I walked to 7-11 pretty much every evening and shared a Coke Slurpee on the way home :) And once the pizza arrived, we all watched Shrek 3 (Ben's choice, of course)! A delightful way to spend a birthday evening, I have to say.

Now we just have to finalize preparations for Ben's birthday party extravaganza on Saturday - we have a pinata to bury, a snake cake to bake, and lots of fedoras to hand out! (he chose an Indiana Jones theme) We got the official birthday portraits taken tonight- man, those kids are so dang cute!

Snakes - why'd it have to be snakes?
Ben's pensive Indy pose

Happy Birthday Ben!