Happy Birthday Gregory!

Yesterday was Gregory's 5th birthday.  Wow, some days it seems like yesterday we were hurrying to Landstuhl after my water broke and other days I KNOW it wasn't yesterday.  It has been such a blessing to be back in Germany for so many reasons and Gregory is one of those reasons.  Since he was born here, it's so much fun to show him things like the hospital he was born at, the building we lived in where his first bedroom was and so many other things.  HE LOVES living in Germany...funny thing is, he is the kid who would find something great about where ever we live.  He is my encourager, compassionate, smart, active, creative and so much more preschooler (who is more than ready for Kindergarten).

 Gregory picked out a Lego birthday theme quite a few months ago, so I had been combing Pinterest for every idea under the sun and then had to narrow them down to what was actually going to be possible.  So we ended up invited FIFTEEN kids to the party and 13 were able to come.  It WAS CRAZY!  We have a pretty small apartment, so there was very little walking space after all the toys were drug out and with the mom's and dad's which came too...BUT, it was an awesome fullness.  The kids had fun, the parents enjoyed YUMMY food and Gregory ended up saying it was the "best day ever".  So we count it a big success :-)  I made some super yummy yellow cupcakes from my cupcake recipe book from the Cake Mix Doctor books.  They were topped with a homemade chocolate syrup frosting that was easy and yummy, from the same cookbook.  We had pizza biscuits from one of my favorite websites, Onceamonthmom.com and we had a delicious fruit salad (with almost every possible fruit) and there was also dill dip to go with some fresh veggies.  Tom doesn't usually have time or take time in the kitchen, but for this party he was a huge help making the biscuits after I showed him how to make them.

We played two games, I Spy the Lego Guy and Put the Smile on the Lego Guy.  The kids really loved hiding the lego guys and trying to find them.

For decorations I made the birthday banner that turned out amazing...I must confess I didn't design it, just found it online and put it together, so awesome!  And then I had gotten two molds - a lego mold and a lego figurine mold.  So I made yellow lego guys for on the top of the cupcakes, made chocolate lego bars, lego guy crayons and lego soap.

Gregory was INCREDIBLY blessed by all of the gifts his friends gave him.  There were plenty of legos, some Kre-os, a Spiderman car that does tricks, games, a ball and glove and a Leapster 2 (that will be awesome for the airplane ride we take in a few days!).

Oops I forgot one thing about the day before the birthday we all (as a family) got to go enjoy cupcakes with Gregory for snacktime at Preschool.  This was a great start to the birthday fun.  And to cap it all off there was a Kid's Fest on base today, so we got to meet some friends for this and enjoyed pony rides, balloons, games and the Kid's Flea Market where the boys got even more toys they didn't need :-)

So now that the celebrations are done and the house is still pretty decently clean, we move on to packing for our trip to MO and MN.  We will get to be in MO to see my sis-in-law graduate from CBC and then we'll head up to MN where I'll get to see the majority of my family (all except Kevin's family - which we will miss).         

As always there are tons of pictures to show things better than I could ever describe them :-) 
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