The Big Five! Finally!

Woohoo!  I’m finally blogging about the kids’ birthday!  (Thank you, David, for the yummy birthday cookies!)
THEY ARE FIVE!!!!!!
Really, it doesn’t seem possible.  They’re still my babies!  They shouldn’t be about to start KINDERGARTEN!!  They don’t let babies into kindergarten, do they?
But, alas.  They aren’t babies anymore.  They are five.  They pick out their own clothes and dress themselves and brush their own teeth and buckle their own seatbelts. 
They are great big five-year-old kids.
And THAT, my friends, is worth celebrating!
We had big plans this year for the kids’ birthday party, involving lots of outdoor water fun and an overnight campout with the Indy cousins…but it didn’t quite work out the way we’d hoped.
Because it rained.  And rained.  And rained.
Oh, well.  We made the best of it!  Luckily little kids are perfectly content to just play with toys when there are extra kids around, so JonZReaTom and guests basically just ran around the house and played, and occasionally stopped for presents or cake!
The day started out well, with sunshine and pancakes!

Then it was time to make a camping cake!  After picking bits and pieces from several other camping cake examples from Coolest Birthday Cakes and Family Fun, I came up with this:

It’s no professional job, but I was pretty proud of it!  I loved the idea to use the candles for the campfire, and I LOVED the way the pine trees turned out.  (The recipe is on the above-mentioned Family Fun site).  The Bronco was Jim's addition along with its rock wall.  No campout is complete without the Bronco!

Putting the kids on the cake was all my idea.  I’m pretty proud of that too!

We are now well-armed with both Nerf guns and Star Wars light sabers.  Luckily, the light sabers got a better reception from Reagan than the guns did.  Perhaps because there were no other little girls opening up princess dolls at the same time!

Reagan enjoying a tea party with Kennedy and Cousin Avery

I wish I had taken better pictures.  It was hard because the kids were constantly changing activities, and our house is not that big, so it was a little crowded with so many people in out of the rain!  Oh, well!
It did eventually stop raining, and we were able to move to the backyard to grill out and pretend we couldn’t see how muddy the kids were getting.

Mud puddles!

And even though it was wet outside, we decided to pitch the tents and camp anyway!  The kids just really had their hearts set on it! 

In our pajamas with Cousin Avery, waiting for bedtime and enjoying some of our presents

(We won’t discuss the lightning storm that flared up in the middle of the night and sent us all inside)

So even though the day didn’t turn out the way we hoped, it was still a great day!  We got to hang out with friends (our friends AND the kids’) and family (We’re especially grateful to PawPaw and NeNe and Clay and family for coming in from out-of-town to spend this special day!), enjoy some great food, and have a lot of fun!

Happy birthday to my little superheroes!