Way back when...

on Sunday, September 19TH, Noah Townsend, our eldest, turned 5 years old!

Since Noah's birthday fell on a Sunday this year, also known as the Sabbath in our home, we decided to celebrate his birthday over the course of the weekend... Friday, Saturday and a little gathering w/the grandparents for dinner and cake at our place Sunday evening.

My boys are suddenly fascinated with all things SUPERHERO! Batman, Spiderman, Superman... The Hulk... these are the men my boys admire. If they could obtain "spidey vision" or turn green with ripped muscles it would be a dream come true! They practice their "flight training" to become like Superman bouncing off my bed in the morning or off The Love Sac onto the couch in the evening... Three words, often associated with  SUPERHEROES , "BOOM", "POW", "SPLAT!" have infiltrated their everyday lingo... they do fist pumps, but not to imitate cast members from MTV's reality show "Jersey Shore", but because they have to "practice" just in case they have to fight a villain.  We've replaced all of the Quicksilver and Volcom tees in their wardrobe with  SUPERHERO shirts.  Each morning it's a fight over who gets to wear the coveted Spiderman shirt as opposed to the nice green polo shirt grandma bought the boys. I'm even in the process as we speak of transitioning Cohen and Ian's bedroom they share together into a SUPERHERO bedroom... that animal/alphabet theme I first decorated their room in is obviously NOT of any interests to them anymore. They are all becoming OBSESSED with  SUPERHEROES and to be honest, I don't know what even spawned their obsession?!  I'm beginning to think that perhaps it's just a phase all little boys go through... last year Noah was head over heals crazy about Thomas the Train, this year, it's the SUPERHERO SQUAD.  Hopefully next year, their obsession will be with Scrooge McDuck and maybe then we can start SAVING some $$$.

When it came to choosing a birthday cake this year, Noah decided he wanted a Spiderman cake.  Seems simple enough right???  Wrong.  If he were one of my other boys who can actually eat gluten, I would have just ordered a Spiderman cake from the bakery, BUT, keep in mind Noah is VERY allergic to gluten SO I was confronted with the challenge of making the gluten free Spidey cake all on my own.  If I baked and decorated cakes as magnificently and with the same expertise as my own mother used to do for my birthdays I wouldn't have been worried, but I'm a complete NOVICE.  Lucky for me, I found a tin Spiderman cake pan at a party store that I could use to mold the shape of the cake...  I poured, prepped and baked the actual cake a day in advance which left only frosting it for the following day... I THOUGHT I was being so clever; frosting the cake should only take 30 minutes or so to do... right??? WRONG AGAIN!  Since I had little to none experience frosting a cake and I didn't have all the right tips for frosting it, I had to make due with what I already had and it took me A LOT longer than 30 minutes to frost.  It actually took closer to 2 1/2 hours, since it required me to make all the butter cream frosting from scratch.  The detail on the Spidey cake was actually really intricate... a lot fancier than what my super new skills could manage to pull off... don't look too closely otherwise you'll see all my sloppy mistakes, but if you cross your eyes the cake actually does resemble Spiderman somewhat, wouldn't you say???

NEVER AGAIN will I be fooled into thinking that baking and decorating a character from a tin cake pan is "EasyPeasy"!

Since I spent more time Sunday afternoon icing the cake than I originally expected too, dinner didn't turn out quite like I'd hoped.  Noah wanted to eat spaghetti (gluten free of course), so while I had a pot of g.f. noodles boiling on the stove for he and I, I had another pot of spaghetti boiling on a separate burner for the rest of the fam... I swear I only took my eyes off the stove no more than a minute, just long enough to answer the door and let Grandma and Grandpa Campbell in, when both pots of water were boiling over like Mt. Vesuvius.  At that very same moment, the garlic bread I had toasting under the broiler caught fire and burnt up like a crisp setting off all the fire alarms in the house AND my eggplant Parmesan got a little over baked.  No, dinner wasn't exactly how I envisioned it to look or taste, but the birthday boy didn't know the difference.  That's what's wonderful about 5 year olds, they don't expect much, anything tastes good, just so long as it's not peas and carrots.

After dinner, we sang "Happy Birthday" to Noah... he was SO EXCITED to blow the candles out on his cake.

 

Presents followed... we bought him his new personalized SUPERHERO cape, complete with a personalized tee shirt, a  SUPERHERO mask and arm cuffs ( I had to order it a couple of weeks in advance so it would arrive in time for his birthday; since I was going to the effort of buying Noah a cape, I figured it wouldn't hurt to order Cohen and Ian their very own capes too... I ordered the capes from the following website... check it out; they're SO SO SO stinking cute and totally worth the penny... www.powercapes.com + I found a coupon online for free shipping).

 

 

He also chose a rocket launcher from the Clark Planetarium gift shop when we went the Saturday night before for his birthday date.  His BIG present is a telescope, which we still have yet to get... since a telescope is a little more pricey than a box of Legos, we told him he'll get it for Christmas as both his birthday and Christmas present combined.  He LOVES star gazing and all things space.  Mom, that's me, still has a LOT to learn about stars and constellations.  I'm embarrassed to admit that all along for years and years I thought I knew where the North Star was but just discovered recently I've actually been looking eastward at some nameless star instead of towards the North! Aunt Tricia and the kids sent Noah a cool new kaleidoscope and Grandma and Grandpa Campbell gave Noah some cool new dinosaur puzzles.

Aunt Tricia didn't want to leave the other boys out so she also sent us a cool new set of blocks!

Grandma and Grandpa Truesdell sent love and birthday wishes to Noah via a birthday card and some $$$ to add to the telescope fund.

These bug eye glasses came in the birthday card from Aunt Laura... he wore them for breakfast Sunday morning.

Skipping back a couple of days, on Friday, the 17TH, Noah got to celebrate his birthday in class with his teacher and friends.  He brought giant lollipops to share with his classmates and in return he got to be the "Special Helper" in class, wear a birthday crown, received a cool new bottle of bubbles and a birthday balloon!

That same night, we watched the movie "Hook" outside on our big screen and invited some of our cousins, neighbors and friends over to watch with us. The following day, on the 18TH, we ate doughnuts (g.f. ones for Noah) for breakfast; doughnuts are a REAL rare treat in our house... the very next morning for Noah's birthday breakfast we ate Dutch Oven Apple Pancakes (g.f. of course) topped with whip cream... Saturday afternoon Noah's two cousins Ike and Eli came over with Uncle Aaron and Aunt Emily and took him shopping to pick out a LOT of cool new books to add to his book collection... after which, Grandma and Grandpa Campbell came over to watch the three younger boys so Spencer and I could take Noah on a birthday date up to visit the Clark Planetarium in Salt Lake.

The following photo was taken on our way out the door...

I'd never been to the Planetarium before but was pleasantly surprised by how cool it was! 

 I've forgotten which planet's surface Noah is walking on below... Mars???  Yeah, isn't that the red planet?

"One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind"...

This contraption that demonstrated Newton's laws of motion was pretty cool...

Seriously, there's some pretty neat stuff there including really awesome IMAX movies... we watched one about the night sky and constellations.  NOAH was FASCINATED by the starry sky; I thought it was really cool too, but worried in the back of my mind because I'm clueless when it comes to finding constellations and planets... how on earth am I going to teach my child?!  Fingers crossed, maybe he can figure it out on his own and perhaps teach me a few things about the night sky... To top off the evening, we took him out to eat... he had his choice to go and eat anywhere but ultimately he chose In and Out... he just wanted a burger, no bun, just the meat and cheese along with a strawberry milkshake.  Simple enough... we had a great evening spending time alone with just him.

I'm surprised by how quickly 5 years has passed!  I still remember when I first got to hold him in the hospital several hours after he was born... he was a GORGEOUS baby and he had so MUCH hair!  I recall being slightly concerned because his cheeks were SO chubby; I'd never seen a baby before with such chunky cheeks!  Noah still has chubby cheeks, but they've slimmed up some...though they're still barely noticeable under his baby fat cheeks, we just discovered that Noah also has dimples like his younger brother Ian... and here we thought it was just the luck of the draw that Ian got dimples. As it turns out, 3 of our 4 boys have dimples.  We're not sure who's side they came from, either mine or Spencer's, but they're darn cute and the girls will be drooling over them as the boys grow older! Noah's outgrowing his little pot belly and chubby cheeks; his fingers don't look like little sausages any longer and his hands aren't quite as pudgy as they used to be.  He still wears 2T and 3T tee shirts but his legs have grown LONG and skinny so he wears 4T pants that all fall off his waist but suit his height.  He's smaller than most kids his age, always has been, but he has a BIG personality!  He's confident and pleasant to be around... most of the time.  His smile is infectious.  One of his coaches remarked, "Noah is ALWAYS smiling! I've NEVER seen him frown."  His teachers all say the same thing about him too.  He's a good big brother; he's had to tolerate quite a bit with his 3 younger brothers but he's lucky to have them.  They're all such good friends.  My sister Tricia and I always get a good chuckle remembering how when he was 3 years old telling her that she should bring her kids inside our house (when she was dropping him off from a play date) because there were "LOTS of toys in the toy room for THE CHILDREN to play with".  Yes, he still refers to his peers and siblings as "THE CHILDREN"; just as an adult would... he's quite mature a lot of the time.  He told me the other night when I was setting the table for dinner not to "get my feathers in a frenzy".  His bestest friend in the whole wide world is his Grandpa Campbell.  Those two could spend hours together just building things.

5 years old and already he's brought so much JOY and HAPPINESS to our lives.  We truly are lucky to have such a stinkin' ADORABLE son.