Five!

I don't know how it's possible that my baby boy turned five on Tuesday.  This past weekend we celebrated with an outer space birthday party for him at our house.  It was a blast!  (ha, ha, puny!)

Huston under his birthday balloon wreath that I made for his Up! party last year.  He wore his space shuttle shirt in keeping with the space theme.

I hot glued little flag signs identifying the food to toy astronauts we already had.  We had planet cookies that I made and iced using my mom's recipe, outer space goldfish, "Sun" chips (get it?), "Flying Saucers" aka Bagel Bites, "Asteroids" aka Chick-fil-a nuggets, grapes (which were unlabeled, but in my mind they were the alien heads, though Clarke thought that was gross and they should be the dwarf planets), cheese cut in the shape of stars with crackers, and "Rocket Fuel" - apple and fruit juice.

My mom made this great cake for Huston with all of the planets in their orbits and the sun on the left side.  He loved it.  In fact, he had a great time at the party until I decided we should sing him happy birthday.  And then he hid under the table and ran to his room.  Oh well.  He eventually forgave me and came back out to have a piece of his cake.

I'm pretty sure his eyes are crossed in this family picture.  He loves to cross his eyes.

We ordered all different sizes and colors of paper lanterns to represent the planets.  Clarke and Huston both insisted on as much accuracy as possible, so Mercury was a tiny 3 inch paper lantern, while Jupiter was over 22 inches.  Clarke and Huston painted the bands on Jupiter and made sure to include the Great Red Spot, and I made rings of aluminum foil for Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.  We actually found an Earth paper lantern on Oriental Trading, so that worked out perfectly.

Sweet friends, Caroline and Wyatt enjoying some grub.

I also ordered some cool planet sticker sheets from Oriental Trading for the kids to do - of course Huston perfectly lined up every planet on the correct orbit, while every other kid just slapped the stickers on the sheet.  I love his obsession with the planets.

We watched our traditional video montage of Huston's year.  I love this tradition!  I think it's so fun to look back over the year in pictures, and Huston and Arden always love watching their videos.

Huston's favorite part of his birthday, by far, was opening his presents.  This was the first year that he has been the one to ask to open his presents, and then actually be excited about it.  Other years he either hasn't cared, or has been too embarrassed to open them with people watching him.  But this year, he was beyond excited and he loved everything!  He got tons of awesome presents - including space books, a space puzzle, two handsome outfits, an awesome telescope, a cactus toy, cactus bank, and cactus books (his other obsession besides planets), an airplane, astronauts and shuttles, and lots of other things.

Clarke and I got him a book called The Three Little Aliens and the Big Bad Robot, which he had seen at his friend Gibson's house, and he was really excited about that.  We also got him a box of 64 crayons for his artistic side, a couple of planets books and stickers, and a set of Magna-Tiles, which are really fun to play and build with.  They were a bit on the expensive side, but totally worth it, I think.  I would highly recommend them if you're looking for a fun and creative gift.

He loved, loved, loved everything he got and it was so very fun to see him enjoying everything about his party (except for the singing bit).

I used some of his many pieces of planet artwork to decorate the bulletin board in our front entry.  Party favors were little bags with a glow in the dark slinky, glow in the dark planet and star stickers, and some glow sticks.

 I can't wait to see what fun obsession he'll have next year to plan his party around!  :)  Happy fifth birthday, Huston!