Gabe's Turning 5!

Okay, so I'm just going to start from now and not going to try to catch up.  It just seemed so overwhelming to try, that I never ended up doing anything!

So, onto what's going on this week...my baby boy is turning FIVE!  His actual birthday is Tuesday but we celebrated with his friends yesterday. 

I cannot describe fully what joy I felt at seeing him so happy at the end of the day.  Having two older brothers and two younger sisters sticks him smack dab in the middle and very rarely in a family of five children does one get 100% of the attention and love.  That's why God invented birthdays.

After much deliberation, Gabe decided to have a monster truck party.  Even though he's more on the quiet side around his friends at church (pretty much the only place he has friends), he still had a long list of kids on his invitation list.  We ended up with 24 kids but it was a beautiful day outside, so they had a lot of room to run around and use their energy in non-destructive ways!

Gabe was really excited when we were coming up with games to play in our party planning.  This game was a big hit with the kids...racing with spoonfuls of dirt to see which team could fill their pot up first.

We had plenty of monster truck toys to decorate with and Gabriel was thrilled with house the house looked once we tied balloons to some and set them up around the house.

The kids played a "Pass the Monster Truck" game, similar to "Hot Potato". 

This is what a happy boy looks like!

The cake decorator of the family is Chris, and he did a great job as usual. 

Racing monster trucks with his friends...

I didn't think we'd get a group picture with so many kids, but aside from two babies, we got all the kids (and one dad). 

And of course a silly picture to let the kids show their true sides...

At the end of the party, when all his friends had gone, he was still grinning ear to ear.  I loved seeing Gabriel feel so happy and special.