And Then He Was Five

Brennan's fifth birthday was last week. Um, I have a five-year-old! Wow, where does the time go?

Of course, he was all kinds of excited. He is very proud of being five. Not that he's not also looking toward the future. Actually, I think he's got his 6th-10th birthdays already planned, haha. He's got goals, you see. This past summer he got to hang out with his cousins while we were in Indiana. He found a buddy in his cousin Matthew. Matthew was 10 at the time, and to Brennan that is his ultimate goal. To be a big kid, and be 10 like Matthew. :) I'm just glad time doesn't fly by quite as fast as he wants it to!

Brennan is still all about Spiderman, so we had a Spiderman filled birthday.



I even hobbled around and made a Spidey cake.


Time to open presents!

These Magformers are awesome. We have played with them every day since he opened them up.







The birthday hat. Ha!


Can't have a birthday without balloons!




The birthday boy with his cake.

Please ignore the black run on the front of the cake. Turkey runs on 220v electricity. We can use our 110v appliances here with step down transformers, BUT the hertz are different, so things like mixers, hair clippers, fans, and digital clocks run too fast. So, no low speed on my mixer makes it hard not to overmix icing. It was still tasty though. :)

Five candles.


Make a wish!








I like how he had to stop and watch the smoke from the first one he blew out.




Still mesmerized.


Alright. Time to get down to business.


Fist clenched in determination!


Another breath.




He did it! But, of course, I don't have a picture of that. :P


Happy Birthday, Little Man! We love you so much!!


XOXO,

Walking in a Christmas Wonderland

My first thought was to be all original and use the title "Walking in a Winter Wonderland," but that implies snow, and there was none.  Frigidly COLD, yes, but no snow.

It is snowing as I am typing this though.  Last night the weather guy said not to expect snow until Friday, but here it is this morning.  Hopefully it sticks around 'til Christmas.  Why live in Utah if you can't have a white Christmas?  Last year it snowed early, melted, and then snowed the day after (and then stuck around until May)!

But that's enough about snow today.  I'm sure I will be posting more about that later this week. : )

As I mentioned yesterday, we spent Saturday evening in downtown Ogden walking around and checking out the Christmas displays.  They go all out!  There is an entire village set up just for Christmas, all lit up, most of them with additional special animations.

(Santa is there in his castle too, but since we already checked that goody off our to-do list, we were able to skip waiting in that humongous line.)

It was hard to choose which pictures to share, so as usual I'll go with the more is better approach.  ; )

First of all...why looky here, I even got into a picture this time!



I always wonder how many people, and how long it takes, to put up all these lights.



Last year we pushed Brennan in his stroller so he didn't get to see everything up close.  He was in awe looking in all the windows.















So much to see!







I tried to take a picture of the moon.



I better just stick with the lights. : )



I see they used the Griswold method to attach their lights. : )



Lots of tiny moving displays.  For the people back in my old neighborhood, it reminded me of the inside displays at Holiday World.  I used to love those.  It's been a lot of years since I've been, are they still there?



















Thank goodness for hot chocolate.



I don't know why we don't go downtown more often.  Even when there's nothing going on, there's all kinds of cool shops and old buildings to see.  This one was vacant, and the windows broken out.  I wonder what it used to be?  I think it just needs some love.





After we headed home and we finally defrosted, we all decided we were a little hungry.  Jason got a pizza, and Brennan and I had some of these.



The perfect end to a great day. :)