FIVE

December 26, 2016

FIVE

December birthdays are no joke. Amidst the chaos of Thanksgiving and Christmas, we squeeze in a special birthday celebration somewhere in-between for Harper and this year was a doozy.

Ten days before Christmas, our sweet little "baby" girl (who is not so little anymore) turned 5. FIVE! You guys, that's an entire hand! I managed to keep my cool, for the most part - but there was something about turning FIVE that I felt deserved extra celebrating.

The eve of Harper's birthday I snuck into her room and decorated with a "Happy Birthday" banner and Shopkins characters while she was sleeping. The next morning I rushed into her room singing my own little tune of "It's your birthday! It's your birthday! Harper's 5 today, it's your birthday!" She shot up from her pillow with a smile, still wiping the sleep from her eyes. We had a busy day ahead of us, and that FIVE year old was ready to conquer the world.

I worked in the morning, but my Mom brought the kids down to Eden Prairie around 11am for an afternoon of celebrating. We headed to Mall of America, where Mitch was planning to meet us after his flight arrived from California. To kill time, we had a celebratory lunch at Rainforest Café. The kids were in awe of all the robotic animals but when the lights dimmed and the "thunderstorm" took over, they weren't so sure. During lunch I addressed Harper using her name and she quickly chimed in, "you mean, the birthday girl!" I rolled my eyes, realizing she may be one of "those" people who likes to have a birthday MONTH and not a birth-DAY. Lunch was fun and entertaining for the kiddos, and luckily timing worked out perfectly. Just as we were wrapping up, Mitch arrived at the mall - next stop Nickelodeon Universe!

During our last few visits to the mall amusement park, Harper has been bummed out when we measure her for rides. She always managed to come up a tad too short for the big roller coaster. With her positive attitude she kept telling us, "maybe when I'm 5 I'll be big enough!" We rushed over to the measuring chart for the Orange Streak roller coaster and sure enough, Harper's head was right at the line - this FIVE year old was totally riding the big roller coaster and on her birthday!

The first time on, she rode with Mitch. He said as they clicked up the first hill and took the first turn he wasn't sure if she liked it or not, but soon after he realized it was all giggles and pure joy. When the ride was over she came sprinting down the stairs with a huge grin on her face yelling, "I want to do that again!" Naturally, I needed to experience the excitement of a 5 year old riding a roller coaster. The two of of us ran up the stairs and hopped on again. The entire ride her contagious giggles had my own laughter uncontrollable. When the ride stopped by cheeks hurt from smiling. It was awesome!

That same night, Karing Kingdom Preschool had their annual Christmas program. I'm a sucker for school programs, so I was excited to hear 3, 4 and 5 year olds belting out Christmas tunes all decked out in their special holiday clothes. As expected it was adorable and heart warming. When the program was over, Harper looked at me and said, "When we were singing Happy Birthday to baby Jesus, it was kind of like they were singing Happy Birthday to me too." 😂

Afterwards we rushed home for birthday cake and presents. The day was busy and exhausting, but oh so worth it for our FIVE year old!

This year we decided to have a kid birthday party too and host it somewhere other than our house. After a lot of deliberation with our indecisive daughter, we finally settled on having a jumping party at SkyZone Trampoline Park.

Hosting a birthday party the weekend before Christmas proved to be a little tricky. Many friends already had plans celebrating the upcoming holidays early, but that didn't stop the birthday celebration! A handful of Harper's buddies bounced their tushies off and stuffed their adorable little faces with pizza and cupcakes at SkyZone. It was such a fun day celebrating our FIVE year old with some of her closest friends.

After a few days of birthday celebrations, there is no doubt Harper is one, very lucky, full-hand-old girl.