Brodie Turns 5!

Yep, that's right.  5.  I can't believe that I have been a mom for 5 years.  Brodie is probably the coolest kid around.  His siblings love him - seriously, everyone needs a big brother like Brodie.  For example, Brodie gets tootsie rolls for doing his homework at preschool.  Instead of eating them himself, he always gives his treats to Ryker.  He is the best when it comes to sharing.  His teachers are always raving about him, telling me that he is the most behaved kid in class -- makes me so proud!  He is smart, athletic, and good looking.  The whole package!

On his special day the kids and I went to The Craze.  The Craze has this kiddie jungle gym with all these tubes to  play around in, a bounce house, and lots of arcade games.  Brodie thought it would be fun to spend a little of his birthday money on some of the games.  Daddy got to come play with us too in between classes.

Brodie played against his Dad and Ryker on this boat racing game and won all by himself!  The look on his face when he won was priceless!

Mari spent most of her time in the arcade chasing around these lights on a dance dance revolution type game.  I did my best trying not to think about how dirty that machine was that she was crawling around on.  It will help build up her immunities, right?

Brodie got lots of tickets and he got to redeem them for a zombie finger and a packet of fruit snacks.  He was a happy boy.

Later that night, we had a family birthday party.  It's pretty hard to get people to celebrate with you when your birthday falls on the holiday of Love, but Grandpa and Grandma came and that's all we needed!   Brodie's request was a Wild Kratts party.  Wild Kratts is a tv show on PBS kids that he is pretty much obsessed with.  It is a great show though - each episode is about the characters creature adventuring and learning about animals around the world.  Brodie requested pizza for dinner and dessert pizza for his cake.

After we ate dinner we opened up presents.  Brodie got lots of fun stuff including a tin can robot and a nerf bow and arrow.

After presents I put together a few Wild Kratts creature adventure games.  The first game was the Monarch Butterfly game.  Grandma and Grandpa teamed up with the boys and they had to wrap them up in a cocoon of toilet paper.  In order to get their creature power disc, they had to break out of their cocoons like butterflies.

Next we did Cheetah tag.  They basically just chased each other around grabbing one another's tails until someone got hurt.

We also played Falcon, Falcon, Mouse (duck, duck, goose).  They loved it!

Smores Pizza!

We ended the night playing the game Spot It! Jr. Which was really fun!

For Brodie's friend party, he wanted to have it at the gymnastics center, which is the perfect place to have one when you live in Rexburg... in February.  We invited pretty much everyone we know who has kids.  I wasn't really sure if anyone would show up, but we had 24 kids come!  It was awesome!

One of the moms showing her kids that she can still do a flip!

Brodie had to periodically run in and get a snuggle from his sister.

Brodie requested a Cheetah Pinata!

It was a great day!  All the yahoos got their energy out and my house stayed clean!

We love you so much Brodie!

Brodie Tells Ryker about School and Growing Up.

These two brothers seriously love each other.  Yes, they can both drive each other crazy, but they really do get along well.  Tonight Brodie was life coaching Ryker, who has had huge anxiety lately doing anything away from mom (he quit gymnastics, cries through nursery at church, doesn't want me to leave to go to the grocery store, etc.)  One of Ryker's key phrases is that he is going to be 3 forever and he never wants to grow up.  Well tonight that has all changed and he's ready for the world!

We missed a lot of great stuff, but Bo had the bright idea to sneak his phone into their room to record their conversation.

Basically Brodie was telling Ryker all about the rules at preschool.  If the class doesn't get a hang man then they get to go have gym time where they can play in the foam pit or do whatever the teacher says, then they do crafts and after that mom will come and pick him up.  Then when he is 5 - kindergarten.  But he has to follow directions!

Then they move onto when they are both 10 and that's how old they are going to grow "so high" but they still have to do everything that mommy says.  Then Ryker asks if they will be old enough to touch their airplanes (they have model airplanes hanging from the ceiling that they are not allowed to touch).  Brodie assures him that they will be able to do all sorts of amazing stuff.  Ryker continues by asking if they can touch knives and light fire on the cake.  Brodie says yes and tells him that when they grow they get to do special things.  

Now Ryker is all ready to grow!

I went in to tell them goodnight one more time and Brodie said that Ryker wants to start going to preschool with him (Brodie has been getting a couple new 3 year olds in his class, so he's been wanting Ryker to join him too)  I told Ryker maybe we could just try gymnastics again first and he was "so so excited" but he wanted to make sure that when we go to Nana and Papa's that he is going to tell Nana that he likes gymnastics now. (The last time we were there he kept telling her that he didn't like it anymore.)

LOVE these boys!