FIVE!

He's FIVE, people.

FIVE!

Half of a decade!

Halfway to double digits!

Cinco!  Funf!  Cinq!  Go!

FIVE!

[That's a lot of exclamation points.  I know.  It's just really BIG news.]

Despite all of our insistance begging, Will refused to turn four again on this birthday.  He's just, plain and simply, a great big five year old.

Will had been looking forward to his birthday for weeks.  Probably months.

He'd wake up in the morning that week before the 8th and (while still groggy), tell me "two more days".  :)  He was excited.

So... as usual, the birthday banner went up, balloons were scattered on the sleeping child's bedroom floor and gifts were wrapped and ready to open.

When we tucked Will in bed the night before, we instructed him that it must be at least 7:30 a.m. before he came upstairs to wake us up and then we would do presents in our bed...

At 7:20, he climbed up the foot of our bed with a big grin and started jumping up and down.  ;-)

We had him snuggle with us under the covers for "just 10 more minutes" and then told him where we hid his first gift in our room.

I found this in Magic Cabin around Christmas time and decided to save it for his birthday instead.  There are about six (?) switches on the side to adjust the pitch of your voice when you speak into it like a megaphone.  I just knew this would be a huge hit... and it was!  Even for Craig and me.  :)

The rest of his gifts (except for one) were wrapped in Transformers paper and stacked on the chair of our little office/closet (which has been rearranged a bit) in our room.

Transformers were definitely a theme this birthday, with regards to gifts.  They have been an obsession the past few months.  (Since before Christmas, really.)

Craig took it upon himself to scour Amazon for "cool Transformer stuff".

And one of the things he came up with was new Transformer underwear.  Will was psyched.  You can see him saying the word in this picture.

Another gift he opened was a hardcover copy of that book we read awhile back about "a lesson in life and money for children".  I knew when we read it that I wanted to start giving Will and allowance when he turned five and to practice this book's well-written message for teaching him to "manage" his small income.  :)

Another Amazon find (which, for the record, I tried to veto), was an Optimus Prime belt buckle.  Yep.  That's right.  And Will makes it look cool.  ;)

Major excitement ensued when he opened the (leader class) Ironhide Transformer.  I loved watching his excitement.

This was hilarious.  Will's final gift was hiding in our closet.  Craig coaxed him in there (without telling him there was a gift waiting) by asking him if he'd go pick out a shirt for Craig to wear.  We stood outside the closet with camera ready, expecting a cheer of excitement when he discovered his new bike.  But instead, all we heard was "what color would you like, daddy?"  Haha!

We walked in to find that he was so focused on the request Craig had made, he didn't even notice the 16" orange bike leaning up against one of Craig's storage bins.

Still in thought.

Finally, we said "turn around, buddy!!"

A little more tiptoe reaching on this higher bike, but it's a much better fit for him.  And he was stoked about the orange color for a change.

Speaking in a super high pitch, Will asked Craig if he would open Ironhide and take him out of the box.  ;)

Already practicing transforming.  This one turns into a GMC black truck... just like daddy's.

Little sister joined us in bed.  She always sleeps a little later than Will.  She sang Happy Birthday to Will and gave him a hug.

For breakfast, I made strawberry scones the night before and waited till the morning to bake so that they were nice and warm.  Will would eat strawberries for every meal, every day of his life.  These were some of our fresh picked berries from Polter's.

"Happy Birthday to you!"

A little bike-riding practice that morning.  This bike has handlebar breaks in addition to pedal breaks, so that was something new to get used to.  And he had a bit of a harder time getting started on this higher bike at first, but very quickly improved.  And now he rides this just as easily as the 12" bike... which, in turn, has retrieved its training wheels and become Sophie's.  ;)

Sophie went to Nana's house for the day and Craig unfortunately had to work this day, so Will and I had the morning to ourselves.  And we had another big "first" to attend to on this birthday morning!  So... we made our way to the library (of course) and signed our little bookworm up for his very own library card!

Generally, when we go, the kids each get to pick out one to two books of their choice and sometimes a movie.  And then I bring along a big list that I pull while the kids are browsing a few themed favorites:  namely Dora, Tangled or Tinkerbell for Sophie and dinosaurs or Transformers for Will.  But since it was his birthday, I told Will he could pick out as many books as he wanted to borrow.  I might as well have told him he could eat as much candy as his belly would hold.  He could not wait to get there and make his selections!

And he really didn't go excessively overboard.  He probably had five or six dinosaur books and four Transformer books.  There's not as much of a selection for Transformers and most of them are comics.  But we did find a couple good ones.  And he generally makes a beeline for the dinosaur section when I give him the go-ahead to pick out his book-of-choice each visit.

He's been carefully trained to only pull a book out about halfway to look at the title/cover so he doesn't mess up the shelving order.  :)  He's really, really easy to take to the library.

Browsing some of his selections to make sure they're keepers.

And then reading some more while I finish pulling my smallish list this time.

He's done this with my card plenty of times, but it's extra special when it's his own.  I let him check out all the books he personally selected.

Showing off his new card, while simultaneously listening to the random ~11 year old behind me saying "I remember when I got my first library card... I was about your age."  LOL

After the library, we drove out to Port Clinton to meet up with Craig for lunch.  They are in the process of building a large barn/garage for a lakefront owner's vacation home.  Will loves to check out daddy's tools and pretend he's a "tool man" like daddy.  He's only recently learned the word "carpenter".  :)

Here's daddy's GMC truck that looks like Ironhide.

Showing Will a small balcony off the top of the garage.

For lunch, we took Will to a place called Porky's that is famous for their pizza.

Will looks so grown up in this picture!

Yummmm!!  Pepperoni and banana peppers... Will's and my favorite!

After lunch, Craig got back to work and Will and I took a walk on the beach.

We came home for a late nap and Will actually slept.  (We are inconsistently successful with napping these days but we still always try.)  I was really glad he did because he'd seemed a little tired all morning and we had unusually later evening plans later on.

For dinner, Will requested cheeseburgers again and barely ate anything but his fruit and a couple veggies.  He ate like a little piggy (appropriately... at Porky's) for lunch that day and I think he was honestly still full.  But he did have a little bit of the strawberry yogurt cake I made for dessert.  This was really good!  A pinterest find... I highly recommend.

We had a little time to burn between dinner and our evening plans so Craig and Will turned Ironhide back into a truck.  See?  Looks like Craig's!... for the most part.  ;)

Aunt Casey came over after dinner to put Sophie to bed for us while Craig and I took Will out for a special evening.  {We need to invest in some shorts/t-shirt jammy sets for Soph.  She's been wearing a mismatched cotton clothing set a lot of the time just because it's too hot for all the jammies she has. :)}

Casey took a picture of us with our birthday boy.  Thanks, Case!

And then Sophie came running out of the house yelling "Wait a minute! Don't take the picture yet!"  She then plopped herself down in front of Will and said "Okay, I'm ready!"  :-)

Our Family

Our surprise evening plans were to take Will to the Ritter Planetarium and Brooks Observatory at the University of Toledo. 

Beginning on Will's birthday and every Friday at 8:30 p.m. throughout the summer, they are showing a program called Dynamic Earth about the inner workings of Earth's climate system.  They have an awesome 40' domed auditorium with a state of the art central star projector "capable of reproducing the sky as seen from anywhere on the Earth at any time."  It is "also capable of speeding up time to show how the sky changes through the course of a night, week, month or year."  And "it is ideal for displaying and pointing out constellations and Sun, Moon and planets; and for giving the feeling of Earth moving through space."

When I called to inquire about programs available for families/children, the man I spoke to (who I believe was the same man that presented the program that evening) said that they did have a program designed specifically for children on Saturdays, but that if I wanted to come on his birthday, the Friday evening program also often had children and would like hold the interest of a five-year-old.  And he was right.  Though some of the information was a bit over Will's head, the visualizations as we watched overhead in the dome, leaning back in our reclined chairs, were incredible.  The program discussed a flow of energy from the sun through "the interlocking systems that shape our climate:  the atmosphere, the oceans and the biosphere".  The visualizations took us into center of a hurricane, a volcano, amidst ocean currents and wind, and face-to-face with sharks and gigantic whales.  They also highlighted constellations in the simulated night sky above us and talked about the drastically different weather on our neighboring planets.

After the program, we were invited to hang around for awhile until the night sky was dark enough (it is staying fairly light until 9:45 and later these days!) to walk over to the Brooks Observatory and view the planet Saturn through their roof top telescope.  Wow!  So exciting that the sky conditions and timing were good for this opportunity!  We had a little time to burn so we checked out some of their displays in the lobby for a bit and then decided to make a run for a strawberry shake before the group moved over to the observatory.

Showing off his new belt buckle.  ;)

And lest you think our children are totally deprived of patronizing a fast food establishment EVER... please note the McDonald's "medium" strawberry shake in our five-year-old's hands.  ALL for him!  ;-)  Buuuut, that's about as far as that train goes on my dollar.

Back to the planetarium (it's now just a little before 10 p.m.!), we're ready to join the group and head over to the observatory on the roof top of McMaster Hall.  We took our turn (our group was reasonably small) peering through the telescope at the very clear - if small - image of the infamous ringed planet, Saturn.  So cool!  And then stepping back out onto the observing deck and looking up with the naked eye, you can still tell which of those brighter "stars" was the planet Saturn we were just looking at. 

It was a very late night for Will, but a very memorable ending to a milestone birthday.  Craig and I called it a night too after just a few quick tasks.  We had a birthday party to prepare for the next day!  A lot was already organized and ready to go, but a few odds 'n ends needed wrapping up.

I'll close with this picture that somehow squeezed itself to the bottom of this post instead of up with the library pictures where it belongs.

We love you, William Dean!  And we love making these special memories with you.  Happy 5th birthday, buddy!!!