Joey Turns 6

Joey turned 6 on Saturday and celebrated with a Robots in Space birthday party at our house.  He was so excited to turn 6 and has been telling me all weekend that he is a "big boy now" and doesn't need my help with things he would've asked for 3 days ago. 

For me this marks the first birthday that I didn't cry.  I don't know if this means that I am okay with him turning 6, or if I was just too busy with the party to remember to have an emotional meltdown over my baby getting so big.  I frankly think it was the latter.  Even during the singing of happy birthday I did not tear up.  Again this is not because I have suddenly learned to cope with my kids getting older - Jeff had a huge hornet land on his leg and I was trying to get it off without it stinging him. So we missed the actual moment when he blew out the candles (thankfully one of our guests recorded it on her iPhone!). 

The highlight of Joey's birthday was his party.  He requested it be a "robots in space" theme and we had a lot of fun planning this occassion.  Over the past couple months we made robots out of household items like chip containers, and picked up little robot trinkets whenever we spotted them in the dollar bins at Target and Michaels. For all that preparation you would think we wouldn't have been up until 3 a.m. the night before the party getting things ready... you'd be wrong!

By the time 2 p.m. rolled around on Saturday we were ready for our guests. 

Joey dressed as an astronaut for the party and bounced from friend to friend with the biggest smile on his face.

There were a couple of memorable moments from the party...

Jeff, in an attempt to reduce the number of kids on the trampoline, announced "Who wants ice cream?!" His idea totally worked and kids came pouring out of the trampoline.  The only problem... we weren't serving ice cream.  I didn't buy any for the party and I didn't have any paper bowls or plastic spoons...  Miraculously we were able to piece together enough for all the kids from what I could find in our freezer. Crisis averted.

After the cupcakes were all distributed Emmie was somehow left to her own devices.  Everyone was distracted with other things and Emmie took this opportunity to lick the frosting off of all the remaining cupcakes.  From what we could tell when we spotted her, she had successfully cleaned off the tops of at least five cupcakes.  Cheri was able to snap some photos of the little princess before we cleaned her up...

 
The party was an overall success.  Joey had a great time and the 20 or so kids that attended also seemed to have a blast.  And really, that's all that is important.

As one of our guests put it, "another great Freeland party!"