5 Years Old

Nathaniel's 5th birthday was this past Saturday, June 7! Luckily for him and us we were able to have his party on the same day. Aunt Jenny & Uncle Chris drove up Friday night an stayed with us for the weekend and Pops and Uncle Jason came over for the party. I rented the large children's classroom at our church and it turned out to be a perfect venue. We decided on a Lego theme a couple of months ago so after many searches on the Internet and Pinterest we came up with lots of fun decorations and games. We had about 40 people including 17 kiddos and everyone had a fantastic time and I was thankful that all those people and kids were not at my house. Just keeping it real and admitting that I have a bit of OCD (well a lot of OCD) and 40 people in my house would not work!

After his friend party at church we came home to open gifts from family!

 

So the party was incredibly fun for the kids and a little wild for the adults but the important event of note is that our little boy turned 5 years old. I handled the day pretty well except I did cry (well full on messy ugly cry) on the way to pick up his cake in the morning. 5 just seems so big and this last week was a hard one with pre-K graduation and birthday all in one. Nathaniel seemed to age overnight and go from little boy to big kid. He tells me he is still my kid and will always live with me and be my baby boy - lucky me!

At 5 he is totally ready for kindergarten (even though I am not), he can read sight word books and is adding and subtracting single digit numbers. His handwriting has much improved over the last year even though he doesn't hold his pencil "correctly." That's OK I don't hold my correctly either! He is a good friend to others and is polite most of the time. He wants to be right and tries very hard. Nathaniel is an amazing child and we are lucky God chose us to be his parents. It is difficult to believe that just 5 short years ago we were making trips to Johns Hopkins NICU to visit our child wondering what the future would look like. I'll be honest those were very hard days and I thank God daily for the blessed life we have!

Happy 5th Birthday Nathaniel! Mommy and Daddy love you so much and are very proud of you!