Benjamin's Birthday

Last month, my son turned five years old. This can't be right, of course, because it doesn't seem that long ago that we were going to the hospital, then bringing him home for the first time. That little bundle is now the five-going-on-fifteen kid that lounges on the couch and makes messes with his Star Wars toys? Really?

This year, we had to actually do some thinking about the party theme. For his first birthday, of course, Meron just picked, using The Dog as a theme. His second was JoJo's Circus, which he was watching a lot at the time. (Ironically, soon after Playhouse Disney moved the show to the very early mornings and I don't think he's seen it since.) By time his third birthday rolled around, he was big into Thomas the Tank Engine, so we had the Thomas party down at the local train depot. Last year was the big Star Wars party, in which he was gifted with most all of my old toys. So that's pretty hard to top.

We almost went Star Wars again, since that's his major focus, but lately he's also been on a dinosaur kick. It somewhat stems from the fact that his favorite stuffed animal is a dinosaur his best friend Micah gave him two or three years ago. This summer, though, he was getting dinosaur books out of the library and really enjoying reading about them, so we went with that for the party.

Meron, of course, doesn't believe in storebought cakes and this time, she really went all out. Along with the flat plain where the dinosaurs were at, she made a volcano, complete with lava-looking frosting, on the edge of it. It was very well done and a complete hit with the kids, who all seemed to want a piece of it at the party.


As we have every year save the depot, we had our party at the church. There's no way we were going to have 15 kids of that age running around our house! I can't even imagine what it would have looked like afterwards. We played games such as put the dinosaur sticker on the picture (a themed version of pin the tail on the donkey), tossed "dinosaur" eggs into a basket, and hunted for plastic dinosaurs outside on the playground.

Everyone seemed to have a lot of fun and Benjamin really enjoyed it. What we are going to do next year, though, is beyond me!