Yup, really. He's 5 years old! It's amazing how quickly they grow up. Not one to back away from a party, Rebecca came up with an amazing shark/aquarium themed one for him.
We turned the side porch into an aquarium.
Rebecca made a watermelon cake that actually tasted like watermelon.
I carved a watermelon shark. Yep, I'm pretty proud of that.
She made chocolate cupcakes with shark fins on them.
She put together quite a spread.
To make it a full day event for him, we took him to the new aquarium at the Natural Science Center. What a neat place! They have penguins, otters, a touch tank where they can touch sea rays, some displays of other marine animals like a 14-foot anaconda, and a nice, big wall aquarium complete with sharks and moray eels.
Emma was in rare form. She is just like Olivia was at this age. She just loved watching the fish and trying to touch the sea rays.
She may not be walking, but she'll climb rocks with no problem.
The big tank was so neat. The kids just loved staring into it. I know I could have spent hours just watching the fish.
Ezra liked the green moray eels.
I think Gabe's favorite was the penguins.
They would actually respond to you and come up to the glass to look back at you.
The otters were also a favorite. Really, there wasn't anything we didn't like about the new aquarium.
For the party, we put together a "
Wipeout"-style, shark-themed obstacle course.
Even the chickens had to come check it out.
Here's the course:
After crawling through two tunnels, you had to sit and pop a balloon with a shark drawn on it.
Then go over or under the two hurdles
Jump into a pool of shaving cream to find a little fish
that you then toss into the mouth of this shark
And finally slide down the Slip N Slide through the shark's mouth.
It certainly was entertaining to watch. (you can see the tunnels in the background. somehow I didn't get a picture of them...)
All the kids had a blast and just kept going through the course over and over.
Cousin Rooney had a good time, too.
I love the look of pure joy on his face.
He was really excited about all of his gifts. He got 2 planes from Grandma and Grandpa, some games from Nana and Pop-pop, a spaceship from his friends and a rug with streets on it for matchbox cars from us.
