Oliver Turns FIVE!!!!

Oliver's birthday morning!! All the presents from the whole family were stacked on the kitchen table, along with several from his friends that we hadn't had time to open the day before. He had loads of fun opening everything up.... a few things he played with a LOT were his new Chuggington trains and track, his stacking robots, his dinosaur excacation kit, and his cherished new stuffed owl. Here's a photo of him with his goggles on, hammer and chisel in hand, slowly digging to reveal the encased bones of a T-Rex. He got several of different kinds of building sets -- Lego, Erector, K'nex -- we can't wait to start building with those. At bedtime, he was super excited to see his new glow in the dark solar system model. Now (a few days later) I can report that he has become a huge Lego fan... he was almost exploding with excitement as we built his new Lego firetruck, and has hardly stopped playing with it since.
After a late breakfast (bacon! eggs! toast!) and more playing, we finally headed out towards Kittatinny State Park with the "superbike" loaded and ready to roll. The weather was stunning, a perfect fall day. I had a great walk with Maddie to the airport at the end, where we met Andy and Ollie, resting on a park bench after their manly bike ride. We found some creative ways to include Owl in the bike ride, since Ollie couldn't be parted with him... first he was inside Ollie's shirt, which was snugly tucked in, but Ollie wanted Owl to be able to see where he was going. So we stuffed him into our camera bag and attached that to the bike with a carabiner clip - the winning solution! Happy boy, happy owl.
We had a quick stop at the grocery store on the way back, then headed to our new favorite restaurant, Alice's, for an early birthday dinner. Andy and I had yummy burgers, and the kids shared one (mammoth) portion of mac&cheese. After dinner, the waitress brought a big bowl of chocolate ice cream with a candle in it, and we all sang Happy Birthday to our glowing, blissed out boy.
So many times during the day, I would tell Ollie what Daddy and I were doing 5 years ago exactly.... how we hadn't met him yet, didn't even know if he was a boy or a girl, were heading to the hospital, was in labor and feeling super ouchy... and he was pretty curious about how he wasn't REALLY 5 until late that night. In fact, as I type this, it was about 16 minutes from now, at 10:56pm. We are blessed that you are ours, Ollie - you are the most lovely boy we have ever known.