Happy 5th Birthday to Our Handsome Young Son

Our birthday tradition is to open presents in the morning upon awakening. Here Benji gets his first present, a treasured (and powerful) Pokemon card from Danny. It was a little dogeared, but very sweet and Benji loved it!

My dad always used to call my brothers his "handsome young sons", and I find myself saying the same kind of thing sometimes - "Benjamin my son, my handsome young son." Of course nowadays you're not really supposed to give praise based on beauty, rather on capabilities or character. I do agree that as a culture we tend to praise boys and girls differently, often commenting on how "pretty" and "adorable" girls are while using words like "tough" or "active" for boys, so I do try to be aware of the kind of language I use, but for today, in honor of my dad and my newly minted 5 year old, I think I'll just stick with "Benjamin my son, my handsome young son!"

For those who still visit this blog, you may recall that last month was a pretty tough one for Benji. He was sick from Nov. 12th - 26th which is a really long time. He's been a lot better since then (not including yesterday's nausea and fever) so we are just about back to normal.

He turned 5 just yesterday so last weekend we threw a Teenage Mutant Teenage Turtle Movie Matinee party at our house. We borrowed a projector and played the movie across a whole wall in the basement and it was great fun!

Then yesterday he got open his presents from us, his favorite being a DS that his Nana got for him. It's the same kind Danny got a few years ago and he is delighted.

When I pulled out the Happy Birthday banner that I'd gotten at Value Village (a local thrift store) I was pretty surprised to see that it was actually a Happy Boss's Day banner. Decided to leave it up as Benji can be quite bossy sometimes. ;-)  Here are a few pics from the past few days. Time now to get ready for Christmas! Have a great day everyone!

My "Happy Birthday" oops banner.

Oh yeah! A Nintendo DS!

Parallel play with their Nintendo DS players. It's nice when they can get along. ;-)

And what's not to like about a clock that doesn't need batteries--just fruits or vegetables for power!