Gimme Five!

When it's birthday time at our house, the honored family member gets to select birthday breakfast. It can be anything they want. To celebrate his 5th birthday, Levi chose doughnuts and chocolate milk for birthday breakfast. Easy for mom!
To celebrate, we headed over to the drive-in movie. It was the kids' first time at a drive-in, and lets just say it exceeded all expectations.



We saw Kevin James, who reminds us of Jeff's brother, in "Zookeeper." You could say the movie exceeded my expectations.

Throw open the hatch back, set up the camp chairs, and make a trip to the snack shack, and we had it made.
Our birthday weekend also took us to Fillmore where we ate at this most fab Route 66-esque roadside cafe.
There we not only enjoyed things like deep fried pickles, mushroom and blue cheese burgers, and lime rickey's, we also met up with Grandpa and Grandma Jones who made the trip just for the birthday boy!

Levi needed to open gifts before we even ordered our food because he had been waiting all day long.
Grandpa and Grandma surprised him with a cap gun, which was a dream come true. He can load it, shoot it, and it "even makes real smoke."
He was a natural. After target shooting during camping a few times this summer, he thinks he is quite the gunslinger.
Grandparents are the best!

Levi got a soccer ball and shin guards from mom and dad. His first game is this week, and he can hardly wait.

Our next celebration was at Grandpa and Grandma JoAnn's with the cousins. The best part about this shot of him blowing out the candles is that we didn't light them. Jeff tried, but the wind was blowing too hard, so we just started singing "Happy Birthday." When we finished, he bent forward and blew just as if he'd rehearsed it.
He got this cool camo overnight bag with his name on it from the cousins.

And a super cool builder's set from Jamie and Rian complete with real metal tools and a wood workbench. He was in heaven and hasn't stopped playing with it since.

We also gave Levi a photo book of his 4th year that I created on Shutterfly, which truthfully is more for me than him at this point, but I love it. I also love retelling each of my children their birth stories on their birthday. I almost feel that nervous excitement as I recount for them the details of the day they entered this world. I am so grateful that their births made me a mother, and that I get to celebrate the miracle of motherhood along with each birthday.