Benny is 5! He had a fun birthday, even though part of it was put together last minute. I'm 36 weeks pregnant and decided ahead of time that I really didn't want to tackle a friends party at that stage. I gave Benny warning and tried to explain that we wouldn't be doing a friends party this year. He accepted that at first but as his birthday drew closer and closer he started to talk about how he was excited to invite his friends over and which friends he wanted to invite. I explained once again that there wouldn't be a friends party but he was very disappointed. I felt bad, after all, this would be his last birthday party here with the friends he had made in Rexburg. I didn't feel bad enough though to actually plan a big friends birthday party. I didn't want to come up with games to entertain a group of kids for 2 hours, I didn't want to clean up cake all over the floor after everyone left or deal with breaking up potential fights after Benny opened his presents and all the kids trying to play with the new toys. I've been super low on energy as of late and moving is becoming hard so the very thought of all that made me feel a little overwhelmed. Don't get me wrong, I normally would enjoy a fun, energetic birthday party, but not just now. So I came up with a compromise. I told Benny he could invite 4 friends to the "Craze." and they could just run around and play for an hour and a half but there would be no cake or presents. We would reserve that with just family later that evening. The Craze is just a little fun house kind of place where they have an arcade and lazer tag and mini golf. Among all that, they also have a kiddie jungle area where they have a little bouncy slide and a tangle of tubes that you can just let kids run around in. That's where we hung out. I asked the parents of the kids either the day before or the day of Benny's birthday if their kid could come and luckily all of them could make it on such short notice. Then later that evening we had Jana, Steve, Sharlee, and Ben over for a birthday dinner of pancakes, sausage, and hash browns (as requested by Benny) and ate cake. It was a nice day. This was the last big event to execute before Levi comes. Now I feel like it is the calm before the storm. All there is left to do now is wait. Just three more weeks but it is inching by so so so slowly. oh well. life is still good especially with Nathan by my side. He's been so caring and helpful. I love that guy.

This cake cracks me up. Benny just wanted to put a whole bunch of his toys on the cake, so I created his canvas. I made parts to represent grass, dirt and water and then let him create. I like the plastic grapes on there.

the next day, playing with all the birthday balloons