Elijah turns 5!

Elijah turned 5 at the end of January and since his favorite thing lately was Hulk, we had a Hulk party.  He helped with some of the preparations by making 4 big melty-bead Hulks for decorations.

It's funny that his favorite superhero is Hulk, because even though Elijah's usually pretty mild mannered, he does have a very intense side.  We sure love this little guy and are proud to call him ours.  5 seems like a big birthday to me and all of a sudden my little Momma's boy is looking very big.  

I used some of my cans from freeze-dried food to make Hulks for bowling and bean bag toss games.

My mint chocolate cake turned out to be kind of a disaster though - I think because the mint chocolate chip pieces all fell to the bottom of the pans and then made it so the cake didn't turn out cleanly.

Mom and Dad came up, despite the wintery weather, to celebrate Elijah's birthday with us.  Just like we did for Cora's birthday, we asked his friends not to bring presents to his party - so we did his presents as a family before.  

Cora made him a super cute custom board game for his birthday.

The party was super fun and crazy!  Since it had to be inside we didn't really have much room, so we told the parents that they were free to drop off the kids and they didn't have to stick around if they didn't want to.  All the kids were from church so we knew all the families well.  Good thing Grandma and Papa were here though because we definitely needed extra adults to help out with this group of busy 4 and 5 year olds!

Hulk themed parties are pretty fun - green and purple foods and balloons make it easy.

And pizza too, of course.

The games were a hit, if a little crazy.

The cake was messy, but I figured it didn't matter too much since it was a Hulk smash cake anyway.  The main thing that saved me was the giant Hulk toy that drew attention away from the terrible frosting.  It tasted really good anyways!

Our cute little friends from church - Kellan, Brayden, Griffin, Nevaeh, Joseph, and Sophie (who was not in this pic)

Those dimples!

The other activity I had planned in case we had extra time at the party (which we did) was this simple Hulk plate mask.  Simple and cheap but the kids loved it!  It wasn't quite a perfect party craft though because they needed too much help with it - I'm still working on trying to find the right balance of fun but easy for a party craft.

Overall, the party was a great success, which was in large part thanks to my parents who helped out a ton.  Wintertime indoor parties are challenging, especially with this young of an age, but Elijah loved it all.  This time I decided to not do a "pin the something on Hulk" because making those posters actually always stress me out and take a long time, and I figured we had enough other games we could play with the cans.  I always have more ideas than time so I usually wind up needing to simplify.  Mom's always good at helping me do that.

After his birthday, there was one day that Cora didn't want to go out in the snow so Elijah, Daddy and Hulk headed out to play, smash, and eat some snow.  

While Mom and Dad were still visiting and able to babysit, we got to go to our friends' wedding (Guillermo and Jessica Rivas) which was really nice to attend without all the kids.  Jessica asked me to make their cake, but I knew a wedding cake was way above my abilities, so we hired a friend from the ward to make it for them, for our wedding present to them.  It turned out beautiful, and delicious, she did a great job.